Not the End of Me
by SpiderPhantom
Summary: Clockwork tells Danny that he is the Avatar of his world. In order to escape from his future in this world, Danny allows Clockwork to send him to another, where he can learn to hone his bending skills and help end a hundred-year war. Re-write of the story "Revealed"
1. Changing the Future

**Changing the Future**

"Well, happy 15th birthday Danny." Danny told himself glumly as the wind blew his candles out. He looked around at his old house. As long as nobody bought the house, Danny was allowed to stay here every once in a while. Of course, he made sure that nobody bought the house by haunting it every time someone came looking.

Danny looked over to a photo of his family and friends in a group photo. It had been over a year since… the incident happened. He looked down at the cake Vlad had sent him, and blasted it with an ectoblast, leaving a crater in the ground; similar to all the other ones in the house. From the time he blasted a letter he had gotten, telling him that they found some of his family's remains; to the time a bill for a funeral had arrived at the house during the small period of time Vlad let Danny stay in his house before moving into the mansion. When the funeral home checked again they would find his family already had that planned out.

The only one that had to be covered was Jazzes part of the funeral. Vlad had tried to help with that, which is where another crater had formed; where Vlad had dodged a blast. Danny thought Vlad had only acted like he was sad about this whole incident, and that he was glad his family, friends, and teacher had perished; and now Danny could become his evil apprentice. But in reality, Vlad had indeed grieved for the poor boy.

Danny took some of the blame himself. After the incident, he had gone off the deep end for at least six months, yelling to himself ways he could have helped them, and destroying most of his room in Vlad's mansion. He would torture himself by coming up with ways that he could have saved his family, ways that he could have stopped the vat from exploding, gotten to his family in time, or contained the blast.

He still had nightmares of his family and friends just walking into the Nasty Burger, and Danny would run in place, trying to warn them of the danger. Every dream happened the same way. The building explodes. He sometimes sees it in slow motion: His mom, his dad, Sam, Tucker, Jazz, Mr. Lancer. All just staring at him. Then it explodes, and he can see them catching on fire, burning into black skeletons.

Just then, his ghost sense went off. Normally, he would go ghost and send the threat back to the ghost zone; but this wasn't normal. He didn't even turn around. When Danny looked up to a clock, he noticed the clock had stopped.

Clockwork.

As stated before, Danny took some of the blame himself.

The rest of the blame went to Clockwork, in his opinion.

'It was all cause and effect.' He would think to himself. 'If Clockwork hadn't tried to interfere with time, this never would have happened. If he hadn't sent back a minion to destroy me, this wouldn't have happened. Box Lunch would have never caused me to blow up a Nasty sauce packet, which would have never blasted me into the answers, never had given me the chance to cheat, never would have caused the grill to go on the Nasty containment unit.

'Never.'

'Then there was Skulker and Technus. If he was never sent back in time, me, Sam, and Tucker…

'Sam and Tucker. Gone too.

'We would have never been transported to Clockwork's layer, never would have gone to the future, never would have given, _him_ the motive to go back in time.

'Never.'

"What do you want Clockwork?" He spat the name like it belonged to death itself.

"I bring you news about your destiny." He said. Danny stayed motionless.

"You mean to become _him_? Well sorry to make your trip pointless, but I already know that." He blasted the unmoving clock, trying to vent his anger.

"No. To inform you of a destiny of other sorts." Danny actually turned to Clockwork at these words. Perhaps to see what he had to say, or perhaps to blast him into the wall and suck him into the thermos.

"I don't have a 'destiny of other sorts'. I only have the destiny of getting my ghost half ripped out and to become _him_." Danny turned back to the crater in the floor.

"This news could change that." Clockwork told him, and Danny raised his eyebrows.

"What do you mean? Change the future? Stop… _it_ from happening?" Danny asked and Clockwork nodded. His eyes grew wide as he got ahead of himself. "So… would changing the future, would that change prevent… would that prevent the explosion?" Clockwork frowned.

"Unfortunately that is very unlikely." He considered telling Danny the truth, but knew that he couldn't take it. "You see, since you and your future self traveled through time, you both live outside of time. No matter what happens, he will still be in that thermos in my clock tower." Danny's hope was shattered and he closed his eyes, furrowed his eyebrows, and turned away once more.

"While the past is written in stone, your future is what you make of it."

"What difference does it make?" Danny growled.

"The difference, Danny, is that what you choose to do today could change the millions of lives that you end in the future." Clockwork shifted from old man to small child. "I've come here today to tell you that you are the current Avatar of this world." Danny looked back at him.

"The current what?"

"The current Avatar. A being who is able to bend earth, water, fire, and air. The Avatar is also the bridge between the human and spirit world."

"Huh." Danny scratched his head. "You said 'current' Avatar? Were there ones before me? How come I haven't seen anything like this in the history books or on the news?" As Danny asked, Clockwork shifted from looking like a small child into an adult.

"Long ago, in ancient times," He waved his scepter in the air and windows into the past opened up, showing gatherings of people in dull colored rags and furs. At the center of the gatherings were individuals that were moving the earth, summoning fire, blowing people away with air, and flowing water with complicated, swift movements.

"People were able to manipulate the elements with their movements. Though these movements live in in adaptations of what is now called martial arts, the art of bending the elements has been long since lost after the few who were able to bend the elements were treated as outcasts by jealous rulers and non-benders.

"With this art lost, the connection to the spirit world was thinned to the point where only the Avatar had a basic, yet almost non-existent connection. With time, and the tyrannical rule of Pariah Dark, the spirit world descendant into chaos and insanity. Once things had settled down, nothing was the same. Only a few ancient ghosts, including myself, remember the peaceful times in the spirit world before it shattered in the hands of Pariah Dark. What we once knew as the spirit world many now call the Ghost Zone."

"How does this change anything?"

"In another world," Clockwork waved his scepter again, and now windows showed groups of people bending. "People who could bend strived, and civilizations were created based on what you could bend. Four nations based off of water, earth, fire and air.

"Again, how does this change anything?"

"I wish to send you to this world."

"What?"

"There you can be trained in the ways of the elements…"

"What's the point?" Danny yelled, getting impatient. "And why are you coming to me about this now?"

"The point is that the other world is approaching a war. A war caused by the Fire Nation. If the Fire Nation wins, it means the destruction of the other nations and death of millions. I believe you could help the Avatar of that world end the war." As Clockwork explained this, Danny sat down in a chair and put his hands into his head.

"And to answer your next question about why now… Well normally, in ancient times, and in that alternate world, the Avatar would be told of his destiny on his sixteenth birthday." Clockwork shifted into an old man. "But tomorrow everything changes if you stay here." Danny frowned.

"What do you mean?"

"When you go back to Vlad tomorrow morning, he will decide to try ease your pain by separating your ghost half and human half. I'm sure you know what happens next."

Of course he did.

"If you come with me, you can avoid all that."

"So, if I come with you…" Danny looked out the window at Amity Park. "Will I be staying in that world?"

"That will be up to you." Clockwork told him and Danny paused.

"I'll… I'll do it. Anything to prevent me from becoming him."

"Very well. I'll be back once you're done packing." Clockwork made a portal and began to go through it and stopped midway through. "You won't need much. Just bring essentials."

"Wait, Clockwork." Danny stopped him before he left and Clockwork turned around to face him. "One more question. Why me?" Clockwork smiled.

"I'm sure it's no coincidence that the spirit Raava chose one who was destined to be half ghost to be the bridge between our worlds." And with that he was gone, leaving Danny alone with his thoughts.

* * *

**A/N: So I've decided to re-write this story mostly because I liked the ideas I had but not the set up I created.**

**Could use a better title if anyone has a better idea.**

**Tell me what you think!**


	2. Southern Air Temple

**Southern Air Temple**

Clockwork returned once Danny had packed all he thought he needed. He met Danny in the Fenton's kitchen. Danny only had a small duffle-bag, which held a few clothes, ghost fighting weapons, his old empty backpack, and a few pictures of his family and friends.

He put his hand on Danny's shoulder and clicked the clock top of his scepter. Their surroundings were gone in a swirl, and they were immediately transported into Clockwork's clock-tower. Clockwork floated over to his cabinet of medallions.

"Take off your shirt." He took a medallion out, and went back over to Danny.

"You'll need this. Not only will it keep you in their time, but it will translate their language. Everything you hear will sound like English to you, and everything you say will sound like their language to them." He put it around Danny's neck. "But it will need to be attached to you, otherwise we risk it falling off or being stolen." Clockwork pointed his scepter at Danny like a spear, and pressed the tip against the medallion.

It became paper thin as it pressed onto Danny's skin. Danny yelled in pain and surprise when it melded with his skin, sparking as it attached itself.

"What the hell!" Danny yelled at Clockwork when he took the scepter away. Danny rubbed his palm over the medallion, now pressed into his skin. He noticed that the medallion curved with his chest, rather than being flat and ridged. It looked almost like a tattoo. A really shiny tattoo.

"It had to be attached." Clockwork told him.

"Why couldn't you have just phased it into me?" He asked, still rubbing area the medallion had attached itself as he remembered back to when Dan had put the medallion into his body. That was painless.

"Doing that long term could damage whatever internal organs the medallion is touching." He informed Danny. "This is the safest, most effective, way to connect you to a medallion. Like this, it is flexible, so it won't hinder your movements. The only downside is that you'll have to explain it off as a birthmark or tattoo if anyone sees it." Danny doubted anyone would believe something like this was a birthmark.

"And now, we must go." Clockwork led Danny to a round window that showed him a platform overlooking mountains. On the platform stood an old man with a long, white beard, and in red robes. They both went into the portal, and were transported behind the man. Time was still frozen.

"Before I leave you with this man, you need a brief explanation of what will be different in this world." Clockwork told Danny as he set down his duffle. "Here, there is a greater connection to the spirits. This means that as time goes on, you will gain a greater connection to the spirit of the Avatar, Raava. You must try and control yourself, for now, if you lose control of your emotions, you could go into the Avatar state. The Avatar state is a defense mechanism, and normally, in this world, it would connect you with all of your past lives, and allow their spiritual energy to flow through you; giving you superhuman strength and extraordinary bending. While you are in this state, you could lose control and harm those around you…"

"Oh great…" Danny muttered.

"Although, considering you have a greater connection to the spirit world with your ghost half, I don't know how well you'll be able to control it.

"Due to the fact that there hasn't been a skilled Avatar for thousands of years, it is also unpredictable how powerful you will be in the Avatar state. It's very likely that it will be considerably less powerful than this world's Avatar."

"Mhm." Danny said, half listening half taking in his surroundings. The platform that they had seen in the window was actually connected to a set of towering buildings built on top of the mountain. He could see some in orange and yellow coming out of the buildings, and kids playing in courtyards, all frozen in time. They looked similar to some of the pictures of Tibetan monks he saw in class.

Clockwork looked at Danny, considering telling him another possibility about what could be, but might not. If Danny knew, he might not be able to perform as well.

"Alright, so where are we?" Danny asked Clockwork.

"The Southern Air Temple, home of the Air Nomads.

"I'm betting they can control the air around them." Danny asked

"How very perceptive." Clockwork said sarcastically. "You are here to meet your mentor. Only two people know of your situation. That," Clockwork pointed to the old man in red robes. "is one of them: Avatar Roku, the Avatar of this current time. He will be your temporary mentor." Clockwork turned around and turned pointed to one of the monks who was looking towards Roku. He had a wooden necklace around his neck, with three spirals on the main pendant. "And that is Monk Gyatsu. They will help you in your journey.

"I must also warn you of two important things. One, do not speak of the war to come." Danny's distracted gaze snapped over to Clockwork.

"Wait, what? The war to come? I thought you brought me here to help the Avatar end a war already happening!" He exclaimed while pointing at Roku. Clockwork shook his head.

"No. Not yet. I brought you _here_ to be trained by the Avatar that was here before the war. The Avatar during the time of the war will not be able to teach you the way Roku could."

"And wait, wait, wait. If we're here, before the war, why don't we just prevent it before it happens?"

"Time doesn't work that way. You see Danny, some points of time can be…" Clockwork stopped to try and thing of the right words. "…Rewritten. Changed. These points are malleable, while others are fixed points. Set in stone… If those points were changed, it would be catastrophic to the fabric of space and time. Understand?"

"Not really, but I get your point; some things can be changed, some can't because… reasons." Danny summarized.

"My next warning is not to become a ghost unless absolutely necessary. They are not used to your world's type of spirit."

"I wasn't even thinking of it." Danny grumbled. Clockwork frowned, knowing that he hadn't turned into his alter ghostly ego since the accident at the Nasty Burger. Becoming Danny Phantom reminded him of his future, all ghost self. He didn't want to think of that. Part of him even felt as though going ghost helped him along the road of becoming _him._

"Good luck, Danny." He pressed the button on his scepter, and said, "Time in!" As energy flowed around him and formed a portal, into which he disappeared. Once he was gone, time began to flow again.

.

.

.

Avatar Roku looked around at the surrounding mountains as he waited for the spirit Clockwork to arrive with the Avatar from an alternate world.

"Roku, my old friend!" He looked back towards the towers and saw Monk Gyatsu exit from the center building. "When they told me you arrived, I came down right away! Has the boy arrived yet?" Roku waved to his friend, and then turned around to look back to the cliff side, scanning the landscape for the spirit.

"Not yet Gyatsu." He heard a gasp behind him.

"Well, it looks like he has arrived." Gyatsu said with astonishment.

"Where?" Roku asked, scanning the skies before looking back to Gyatsu, jumping in surprise to see that a raven-haired teen had somehow appeared directly behind him with a bag by his side. Judging by his strange clothes, it was likely that this was the child he was looking for.

"Danny?" He asked the boy.

"Yeah, and you're Roku, right?" He asked, extending his hand. Roku was surprised at this sort of greeting, seeing it only once while training at the northern water tribe as a sign of trust among its warriors. Roku clasped Danny's forearm.

Danny looked surprised when Roku did this, but did the same and grabbed Roku's forearm and awkwardly shook it up and down. Monk Gyatsu walked up to Danny and Roku introduced him.

"Danny, this is Monk Gyatsu."

"Nice to meet you, Danny." Gyatsu told him, bowing. Danny bowed back.

"Nice to meet you too." They all stood for a moment in silence before Danny broke it. "So… What do we do now?"

"Well, Danny." Roku said putting his hand on his back, indicating that they were moving. Danny picked up his bag and moved with him. "We will begin our journey by learning what your core element is."

"My core element?"

"Yes. What bending style you would have initially known had you have been born in our world." Roku put his arm up and palm out, creating a flame in his hand. Danny watched in amazement. "For example, I am from the fire nation. Had I not have been the Avatar, I would be a fire nation. It is the first element I learned." He looked down to Danny. "In order to master the other elements, you must first master your core element."

They came to a stop at a circular platform with intricately designed boards, mounted onto posts stuck into the platform.

"We will start by testing for airbending abilities." Roku said and nodded to Monk Gyastu, who sent a blast of air through the boards, causing the airbending gates all to spin. He let a leaf go into the current. The leaf blew threw the gates, twisting and turning through before emerging from the other side.

* * *

**A/N: And so ends chapter 2.**

**While at first (years ago) I thought of making Danny a full fledged Avatar.**

**But now that I think of it, that is way too much power.**

**I'm gonna handicap him a little.**

**Please review and tell me what you think! It makes me write faster!**


	3. Tests

**Tests**

The next few days had been fairly frustrating for Danny. On the first day, they spent hours with Danny unsuccessfully trying to go through the airbending gates. Danny even considered becoming intangible and going right through the gates, just to end it, but knew that would get nothing done in the end.

After one final un-majestic go through the gates, they decided airbending was not Danny's native element. So they moved on to waterbending exercises. Roku decided to wait until the next night to test this since there was a full moon. In the mean time, Roku showed Danny some basic waterbending stances, and had him practice and perfect them by nightfall.

When night did come, and the full moon rose in the sky, Gyatsu led Danny and Roku to a large pond.

"Are you feeling anything?" Roku asked as they walked. "Any sort of power from the full moon."

Danny frowned.

"Not really. I don't feel any different, anyways."

They arrived at the pond, which was about thirty feet in diameter. While it was normally surrounded by people and flying bison, with the bison drinking and perhaps children playing in the water, it was now calm and very still; glowing in the light of the moon.

"Alright Danny," Roku told him, getting into the simple back stance parallel to the pond, "Get into the back stance I showed you. That's it, good. Now, do what I do after I show you. slowly shift into a front stance, push your hands towards the water as you go into the front stance. As you do this, feel your energy flow through you."

As Roku moved forwards, the water pushed forward, and Danny watched in amazement. "And then move back into the back stance, your arms and body moving with you." He retreated back into his back-stance, and the water retreated with him. He repeated this several times, slowly and fluidly, the pond seemed to be like the ocean, waves pushing and pulling, splashing onto where land met the water.

Roku stopped and faced Danny; the water became still once again.

"Now you try."

Danny looked at the water and he moved forwards and shot his hands forwards with him. And just as quickly he retreated back into his back stance. Roku shook his head.

"Not so fast Danny. Slowly shift your weight from your back leg, to your front. Bring your front arm and back arm forward as you shift your weight, with your front arm finishing further out than your back. Then, just as slowly, bring it back again. Slow, and smooth. Rhythmic. Like the ocean's waves." Roku told him and Danny nodded. He looked back to the water, and took a deep breath. He closed his eyes to concentrate.

Danny slowly, and smoothly, brought his body into a front stance. His arms moved with him, outstretched towards the water. Danny then brought it all back. He repeated this several times, rythmetically. Beginning to feel cool, and relaxed, he opened his eyes and looked at the pond.

Nothing. Not even a ripple. It was still smooth with the moons reflection taunting him at the surface. Danny frowned and took another deep breath.

"Keep trying, Danny." Roku reassured him, and he continued for a couple of hours before giving up.

"This isn't it. Nothing's happening." Danny said, finally getting out of the stance and stretching.

"Bending requires patience, Danny. Patience and repetition."

Danny moaned and got back into his back stance. He continued to do the motions, but now it was lack lustered. Danny wasn't trying since he really didn't feel anything or any sort of connection, and Roku could see that.

Roku called Danny off and told him to go to his sleeping quarters, and that he would greet him in the morning. Danny thanked him and walked to the room the monks had let him stay in, then promptly fell asleep.

The next morning, Roku greeted Danny in the courtyard.

"Today, we're going to try something a less traditional." Roku told him.

Danny raised an eyebrow.

"What do you mean?"

"Well," Roku started explaining, "We've been going about this the way the Avatar would learn the elements. We started with air, then moved to water, and now we should test with earth, and after that move to fire."

"So?"

"So today, instead of testing for earthbending, we'll be testing to see if you are a firebender."

"Why are we skipping earth?"

"For several reasons. One of them is that from the beginning, when I first met you, I felt a strange connection with you. I had a feeling you could also be a native to firebending, and it was ignorant of me to ignore that and have to try the other elements first,and it would be ignorant to continue that cycle. It just seemed strange to have two Fire Nation Avatars in the same place, at the same time."

Danny nodded. It seemed to make sense… Or at least as much sense as the rest this world did.

"What other reasons were there?"

Roku frowned and looked to the side.

"To be honest, Danny, I don't have the slightest idea where to start to test for earthbending."

Danny stared at him for a minute and laughed, and Roku smiled. Unknown to Roku, this was the first time Danny had laughed in over a year.

"I would contact my earthbending teacher, but it would take at least a month for him to to receive the message, respond, and travel up here. And I doubt he would understand this current situation."

With a flick of his wrist, Roku sent a small ball of air down to the ground towards a leaf. The leaf was launched into the air, and spiral down into Roku's hand. Roku gave the leaf to Danny, and told him to hold the leaf with both his hands. He then then pressed the middle of the leaf with his index finger and thumb. There was a small _hssss_ as a hole was created in the leaf with red, burning edges.

"Try and concentrate on keeping the rest of the leaf from burning. Keep that hole contained in the center.

Danny looked at the leaf, and stared intensely at red edges. He pictured the red edges not expanding in his mind, and held onto that image. But, soon the leaf was eaten by the burning edges, and Danny was left holding nothing.

Danny sighed and Roku grabbed another leaf, and repeated the previous steps. Danny was once again holding a burning leaf.

"Keep trying Danny." Roku reassured him as that leaf burnt up. He gave Danny another leaf, this time the burning held. Danny felt hopeful as the leaf maintained.

After ten minutes of the leaf staying hole, Danny smiled and got excited, but then his face twisted into an expression of dismay as the leaf once again burnt. He was given another leaf. As he held it, the hole slowly began to increase.

"Concentrate, Danny!" Roku told him.

"I am!" Danny yelled in frustration, and the entire leaf disintegrated. Danny gasped and look down at his hands.

He was holding a small flame. Roku's look of surprise turned into a smile as he watched Danny look at the tiny flame in wonder.

"Well done, Danny." Roku put his hand on Danny's shoulder. "It looks like my initial feeling about you was right. Had you have been born in this world, you would have been a firebender."

Danny looked up at Roku, and the flame extinguished.

* * *

**A/N: Okay, so that's done. I was going to continue this chapter with Roku and Danny going back to Roku's home island to train, but I started researching if Roku and his wife would have had kids by now, but I went to far into it, got lost in the wiki, and emerged a few hours later after someone out there rolled a five or an eight (thank you). But now I'm exhausted and must rest before continuing.**

** And let me tell you, Zuko's grandparent being Roku has some PLOT HOLES. Mainly the age of one of Ursa's parents. I'm also pretty sure the wiki got Ursa's age wrong, but I won't go into that.**

**Please review! Tell me what you think! Or let me know if you have the answer to this Roku's child thing!**


	4. Roku's Island

**Roku's Island**

"Again!" Roku shouted, and Danny did a side-kick, rolled, and then punched twice on one knee. Small fireballs launched forward as he did each of these movement.

It had been nine months since they had left the Southern Air Temple shortly after they learned Danny could firebend. Roku took him back to his home, a small village on a volcanic island, to further train him.

For days, Roku had Danny practice stances and breathing techniques before actually practicing firebending. Finally, after a week, Roku showed Danny the basics.

Realizing that jeans weren't the best material to be practicing martial arts, Danny traded his blue jeans and white t-shirt for a cotton red shirt and pants.

Danny learned quickly, mastering the first set of forms in the first two weeks; and now, nine months later, he was close to mastering firebending.

Indeed, Danny had each form, stance, and technique down to a point, but something still wasn't right. His firebending was, for some reason, weaker than your average firebender.

For example, Roku performed a side-kick, rolled, and punched twice while on his knee, and with each movement, fireballs the size of basketballs launched forwards. When he told Danny to do this, fireballs did come forward, but they were about half the size.

This was, understandably, frustrating for Danny.

"And once more." Roku told him. Danny repeated the movement, shouting with each kick and punch. While these ones were larger than the last two attempts, they were still proportionally smaller than Roku's.

Danny kicked a rock in frustration.

"I don't understand, why am I so… weak?" Danny said, and he sat on the ground.

Roku frowned and sat next to him.

"I don't know, Danny." Roku said. "A firebender's strength varies from person to person."

"Yeah but I'm the..." Danny looked around to make sure no one was in the valley they were training in. "I'm the Avatar. Shouldn't I be, you know, stronger?"

"There are many reasons you could be a different case," Roku said, "perhaps it is because you are from a different world. Maybe there, this is incredibly strong."

"Yeah, maybe." Danny said, rubbing the medallion attached to his chest through his shirt.

"Why don't you take a break? Go into the village and get some fruit." Roku suggested, giving Danny four copper pieces. Danny smiled.

"Thanks." He took the pieces, stood up, and began walking westwards towards the village.

.

.

When Danny had first come to the island, he was greeted with curiosity, but was very welcomed as the Avatar's firebending apprentice. Danny liked the little village, and most of the villagers that he had met liked him.

One of the girls, Ming (daughter of the local fruit vendor), had actually developed a bit of a crush on the stranger. It was hard for her not to, with the mystery surrounding the teen and his strange appearance; like his colorful red, white and blue clothes that he arrived in. Or his eyes that seemed to belong to someone in the watertribe, but with pale skin like those in the earth or fire nation.

Danny's mysterious and sudden arrive had created some rumors around the village as well. The rumours ranged from Danny being an orphaned Firenation boy off the street that Roku had graciously taken in (not too far off), to that Danny was the long lost son of Roku from an affair in the Northern Water Tribe when he trained there years ago.

Ming really didn't care about Danny's past, just that he was here now. And that he was walking into the village. She ran to the shed in the back of her house, and wheeled the fruit cart out front. Normally, when the sun started to lower in the sky, her father would close the stand, and put the fruit cart away.

She placed a block on each wheel to stop it from moving, and unfolded the legs from the other side of the cart. Ming still remembered the one time that she had forgotten to put the blocks in front of the wheels, and the cart began rolling down-hill towards the ocean. Danny happened to be there, and ran at unbelievable speed to stop the cart. Which he did, with only seconds to spare before the cart hit a rock on the beach. If that cart had broken, she knew that her father—

"Hi Ming." Danny said.

Ming snapped her head up from organizing the fruit.

"Oh." She pushed her hair out of her face. "Hi Danny."

Ming was fourteen years old, and the oldest of her family's two children. Her brother, Lee, was four. She was a few inches shorter than Danny, with black hair, and brown eyes.

Danny looked down at the selection of fruit, even though he already knew what he was going to get.

"I'll have a—"

"Mango?" She asked, interrupting Danny. She immediately blushed, and avoided eye contact while she picked up a mango from the cart and held it out to him. "Sorry, you usually get a mango."

Danny took the mango from her and took out the four copper pieces from his pocket.

"Uh, thanks. It's cool that you remembered." He said.

"That would be three copper pieces." She told him.

"Isn't it usually four?"

"Not for you…" Ming said and giggled as she took the three copper pieces from him as he stood there, stumped about why he was receiving this act of kindness.

"Um… flameo." Danny said awkwardly, remembering the word he heard some kids say when he told them he was Roku's apprentice. "Thanks again!" He said and waved at her as he left.

"Bye!" She said and he repeated back at her. Ming sighed and started folding up the cart again.

.

.

'_Why was she so nice back there?'_ Danny wondered to himself as he peeled the skin off the mango while he walked. He remember the way she said,

_"Not for you…"_

Then giggled. "_Not for you…"_ What is that supposed to mean?

Danny stopped walking. _'Wait… Does Ming have… Does she like me?' _He paused for a minute.

"Nah." He muttered under his breath and waved his hand to the side, as if to dismiss the idea.

He stopped again.

_But does she?_

Thinking back, Danny began to recall how Ming treated him since they first met. She was almost always the one behind the stand when he got there, he had even seen her shooing away her father as he approached, she gave him a kiss on the cheek when he saved the cart from destruction, and he was pretty sure when walked into town that the fruit stand would be closed since the sun was almost setting in the sky.

If he was right, he wasn't really sure how to feel about this.

On one hand, a fairly pretty girl actually liked him for a change, instead of him pinning after her. That was new. On the other, he wasn't really sure he could be with anyone right now, since he didn't know how long he was going to be here and everyone who had gotten close to him in the past died.

_Don't think about that._

And on another, deformed, sad hand, he could be completely wrong.

Danny sighed and finished up the mango as he approached Roku's house.

.

.

.

It was almost dark, and when he entered the house, Roku's wife, Ta Min, greeted him.

Ta Min told him that Roku wanted to speak to him in Danny's hut. Danny thanked her and walked back outside and around to a small house that looked like it had been carved into the mountainside; for it was.

With Roku wanting Danny to be close by, but not having enough room in his house, he earthbent a small house out of the mountain. A wooden roof was later added, for a house made completely out of rock worked like an oven in the hot, Fire Nation sun.

Danny entered through a cloth hanging door, and Roku was indeed waiting for him. He was currently looking at the framed picture of Danny's family on the nightstand.

Over the past nine months, Roku and Danny had grown fairly close, as is expected when you spend the majority of your time another person, and they enjoyed each other's company. Roku was the closest Danny let anyone get to him since the accident with his family; he was almost like a father figure.

The boy had grown on Roku too; he was becoming like the son he had never had. Whenever they weren't training, Roku was telling Danny more about their world. The nations, what animals inhabited this world, his previous friendship with the current Fire Lord. He had even shown Danny how to play pai sho, something else they did in their free time.

And Danny in tern told Roku about his world. How there were many nations in his world, too many for him to count, but he knew it was in the hundreds. He explained that he was from a place called the United States of America, where people voted for who was in charge. He told Roku that in his world, dragons did not exist, to which Roku was surprised.

Danny eventually told Roku about what his family and friends were like, and how his parents were ghosts, or rather _spirit_ hunters. Roku found this strange.

"Hunting spirits." Roku contemplated. "It just sounds… Disrespectful. Spirits are fairly peaceful unless bothered."

"Not in my world." Danny had told him. "Most are just malevolent. Some have even hunted _me_."

Danny was glad to have someone to talk to again, and he really hoped that—

"Oh, Danny," Roku said, looking up at the teen and putting the picture back on the stand. "I was wondering when you would come back." He looked back to the picture. "I'm still amazed how such a small painting could capture such unimaginable detail."

Roku walked over to Danny.

"I wanted to tell you that we may be leaving for the Southern Air Temple soon. Your firebending training is nearly complete, and you should begin your training at the temple."

Danny frowned. He liked this island, it was beginning to feel like home.

"Will you be coming with me?" Danny asked. Roku smiled.

"Of course." Roku walked over and put a hand on Danny's shoulder. "Clockwork instructed me to mentor you on all of your abilities; to do what no other Avatar has done before and instruct another Avatar. Once you learn the basics of airbending, we'll be coming back to this island; where I'll teach you the rest."

"When do you think we'll leave?"

"In a few weeks to a month. You still have a bit to master."

Danny nodded and, seeing that it was dark out, bid Danny goodnight. Danny sat down on his bed, and picked up the picture frame.

He felt great. The best in over a year.

.

**. . .**

.

_BANG!_

Danny's eyes shot open as the ground shook.

He jumped out of bed and ran outside.

Balls of fire were slamming into the earth, sending shards of stone and ash everywhere. Danny looked to the sky for the source, and found it coming from the volcano.

_Oh no._

Danny ran back into his hut and threw his photographs into his backpack, still packed with the ghost hunting gear and some clothes (he never unpacked them), and slung it over his back.

It looked like they would be leaving for the Southern Air Temple a little early.

He sprinted into Roku's house, almost running into him as Roku and his wife exited.

"Danny!" Roku yelled as he airbent a tunnel through the cloud of ash. "Follow me!" He ran through the tunnel of air, dragging his wife behind him with Danny following.

This was bad.

Danny looked up at the volcano as he ran, smoke and ash billowing out of it.

This was _really _bad.

He thought back to school, back to history lessons about Pompeii. They watched docudrama about it; first, firey pumice rained to the earth, then ash, then a hot fiery heat wave of dust and ash, and then lava.

It wasn't the lava that killed the people in Pompeii, never the lava. It was heat waves that swept through the village. What was it, four hundred degrees Fahrenheit?

Even hotter?

It doesn't matter. It killed them almost instantly and buried them in ash. When a volcano's heat doesn't kill the area's inhabitants, the curtain of ash coming at them certainly does.

Danny couldn't let that happen to these people.

A surge of energy overwhelmed Danny, and suddenly he was running at almost super-human speed, grabbing and dragging Roku and his wife behind him. They weren't that far from the village before, but now they were in the center.

Those closer to the volcano, closer than Roku, where already up and running, but it didn't seem as though the entire town knew what was happening.

Danny yelled at the top of his lungs, aided in part by his ghostly wale (not enough to cause destruction but enough to wake those still sleeping.

"Evacuate your homes! The volcano is erupting! Run for the boats!" The streets were now filled with screaming people, running towards the many boats.

Roku stopped and looked back at the sheet of ash coming at them. He airbended a sphere of air around him that quickly expanded to cover the entire town, setting the ash back but not stopping it.

"Danny! Head to Air Temple Island! Make sure everyone gets off the island, I'll meet you there!" Roku shouted at him and Danny nodded.

Almost everyone was at the shore, some in their boats, when Danny heard someone shout,

"Danny!"

"He looked back to see Ming, carrying her little brother, about forty feet from him. She tripped over a rock, and they both fell. The ash was approaching.

"No!"

Two white rings formed at Danny's waist, spreading over his body and putting him into his old black and white jumpsuit. His hair became snow white, and his eyes a determined green as he flew at top speed towards Ming.

The ash was almost upon them. Crawled towards her brother, embraced him, and closed her eyes. Danny grabbed them both as the ash and dust enveloped them all.

Danny emerged from the darkness, intangible and carrying Ming and Lee towards the shore.

He landed on the hot sand, next to an empty boat, and set them down.

"Get in the boat!" Danny yelled at the two. Lee was crying, and Ming opened her eyes, surprised that they were somehow alive.

"How…" She looked closely at the white haired stranger. "Danny?"

"_GO!"_ He said, picking up Lee and sitting him down in the boat.

He turned around to see Ming still starring at him, mouth gaping open.

"Hurry!" Danny told her grabbing her shoulders. "If you haven't noticed, a volcano is erupting behind—"

Ming kissed him, which lasted for a few seconds, then stepped away from the shocked Danny.

"Thank you." She said, and got into the boat. Danny shook his head to snap himself out of the daze he was in, and pushed the boat into the water, and then flew as he pushed it up ahead of the other boats.

Danny shared one last look with Ming and flew back towards the island.

.

.

Roku earthbent a wall up from the ground where he was standing, blocking the debris from getting any further.

He looked back to the boats to see something flying towards him. As it got closer, he saw that it was a man flying without aid… Impossible!

The being got closer and there was something very familiar past the white hair.

"Roku!" He yelled. "It's me, Danny!"

"Danny?" Roku yelled in surprise. He looked back toward the stream of lava coming towards him. It over came the wall and Roku slid down to a rock jutting out of the mountain. He then earth bent two trenches to divert the lava.

"But, how—"

"I'll explain later!" Danny yelled. "What do you need me to do?"

Roku looked up at the teen.

"Get out of here!"

"But…"

"Go to the Southern Air Temple! I'll be fine!"

Another blast of lava came out of the volcano.

"Please, do as I say!" Roku shouted at Danny.

Danny floated there with a look of disdain on his face as he turned and flew from the island. He looked back and was able to see Roku run and jump to the top of the peak.

Danny turned back towards the mainland and flew as fast as he could.


	5. A Choice

**A/N: PLEASE READ. I decided to change how long Danny has been with Roku. It's been nine months instead of three, or six, or however long I originally said. And just to specify, Danny has NOT mastered firebending. Normally I don't like putting author's notes before the chapter, but I felt this was necessary.**

* * *

**A Choice**

Danny flew over the ocean, hoping he was at least going in the right direction. He thought he remembered the angle from which he and Roku came at the island on Fang, but he could be mistaken. Hell, the angle they arrived at the island could have _nothing_ to do with what direction he had to go to get to the Southern Air Temple.

He'd just have to keep flying, and hope to find land.

Danny looked down at the inky water, his black and white form reflecting thanks to his glowing aura. He'd forgotten how this felt. Back on Roku's island, he was so caught up in the adrenaline, he didn't even notice it. The iciness, chilling to his bones, the cold feel of death-

The power.

God, he missed this.

Danny closed his eyes and enjoyed the old feeling of wind flowing over his body as he sped through the night sky.

Yet, a feeling of guilt began to creep over him.

Almost two years ago, he told himself he would never become Phantom again. Now, he had broken that vow.

And he was enjoying it.

But what choice did he have? Ming was going to die-

Ming.

Joy spread through him as he thought back to that kiss; he flew higher and faster as he basked in that memory. But then he stopped as a feeling dread washed over him. He looked back to the glowing outline of the volcanic island in the distance, smoke billowing from the island and disappearing into the night sky.

Would he ever see her again?

Danny began slowly floating back towards the island, contemplating what to do. Should he go back? Follow the boats; make sure they get to safety? He shook his head, and shot back into the direction he was going at top speed. Roku told him to go to the Southern Air Temple, so that's what he was going to do. Besides, Danny knew he would see her again. After all, she went with Ta Min, so when Roku goes to find her, Danny would go with him and find Ming.

But first he had to get to the Southern Air Temple.

.

.

.

Hours past, and Danny could finally see land in the distance.

_Thank God._

Danny was exhausted from flying so far and for so long; not to mention he only got a few hours sleep before being woken up in the middle of the night by a volcano. His flight path was swaying up and down as he went.

His ghost powers also seemed to be sputtering at the over exertion. Danny's powers were like a muscle, and they hadn't been exercised in over a year and a half -and he was beginning to strain himself. After a couple of hours of flying, the white ring formed around his torso, and began spreading before Danny looked down, and willed it to stop. Later, his eyes drooping, the white rings came over him, and he plunged into the cold water.

This woke him up immediately and he went ghost and shot out of the water. He was worried that he wasn't going to make it.

But there was an land up ahead; he didn't have to worry anymore.

Danny approached the beach, about twenty feet up in the air- drifting more than flying- and looked around as he continued to float forwards.

Was he near the Southern Air Temple? There should be mountains ahead if he was.

Danny felt a familiar tingle around his waist. He looked down to see the white halo begin to travel upwards.

"No! No, not now!" He ring went over his head, and he began to fall. "No!" He shouted. Danny flailed his arms wildly, and everything seemed to happen in slow-motion as he fell. He concentrated on turning into his alter ego, even yelling his old trigger phrase,

"I'm going ghost!" But he knew it was of no use as he turned his head down to the ground, allowing his to watch it as it rushed up to hit him.

.

. . .

.

Everything was black.

Danny sat up in the dark, and tried to make sense of his surroundings. But he could see nothing.

He looked down and saw that he was in his ghost form; his glow only lit his own body up, and nothing else. Danny tried to think back to what happened to him, how he could have gotten here.

He was flying towards land, looking for the Southern Air Temple, and then… He couldn't remember.

"Danny." A voice echoed in the darkness. Danny jumped to his feet and looked around for the source.

"Clockwork?" Danny yelled, recognizing the time-master's voice.

"Yes." Clockwork, as a middle aged man, faded into existence in front of him.

"What's going on? Where am I?"

"You are dreaming, Danny." He became old. Danny looked around him again. This wasn't like one of his usual dreams. It didn't even feel like a dream at all.

"You fell near a small village on Whale Tale Island. The fall knocked you unconscious."

"Whale Tale Island… How far is that from the Southern Air Temple?" Danny asked.

"Not far. Slightly North East." Clockwork told him. "There will be someone in the village you crashed who can give you proper directions."

"Good. Thanks-" As Danny spoke, he thought of a question he had hoped to ask Clockwork for the past few months. "-Clockwork, do you know why my firebending is so weak?"

Clockwork sighed.

"Yes, Danny. I know exactly why."

"What is it? Is something wrong with me? Can it be fixed?" Danny barraged Clockwork with questions as the ghost became a small child.

"The problem isn't with you, it's with your world." He said.

"What do you mean?"

"To be honest, Danny, I wasn't sure if you would even be able to bend in this world-"

"Wait, What?" Danny snapped. "I thought you knew everything! You 'See all'."

"Exactly. I see everything. Every alternate decisions, every turn of events, change of fates. There are many alternate routes; where you choose to stay behind, where you become a fully realized Avatar, where you can't bend at all; I've seen one or two who are even wizards. Not everything in time is fixed and not everything is certain." Clockwork shifted into a middle-aged man.

"Now, what I was telling you was that due to your world -and thus your people's- weak connection to the spirit world, it was uncertain if you would be able to bend even one element. The weakness of your firebending is likely due to the weak connection and spiritual energy in your world. There was an equal chance that you would or wouldn't be able to bend.

"I didn't tell you this because you would not have put the effort you did in the beginning to start things off. If you had known that there was even the slightest chance you couldn't succeed, then you might not have succeeded at all."

"Okay, that's understandable." Danny said. "But, does this mean that my bending won't get any stronger? That this is as strong as it gets?"

"Unfortunately, yes. Not only that, but it is unlikely- but not impossible- that you will be able to learn more than one bending technique." Clockwork said.

"Oh." Danny sighed and looked to the floor.

"But perhaps only in your human form."

Danny looked up at him.

"Danny, while you are in your ghost form, have you ever felt more connected to the world around you? I know, of course, that you can fly and so you already have a special connection to the air that flows around you, but when you are on the ground, firmly planted to the earth, have you felt every vibration coming at you? Have you ever felt strangely stronger as you bask in the light of the full moon?"

Danny thought back, and when he thought of it, yes he did. He nodded and Clockwork continued.

"That is because, while you are in your ghost form, you are more connected to spiritual energy than anyone in this world has ever been. In your ghost form, you could be more powerful than the Avatar could ever be outside the Avatar state."

"Woah…" Danny said, satisfied and amazed with Clockwork's answer. He paused for a minute before realizing that everything they've talked about was something he wanted to know.

"So why are you here?"

"I've come to you with a choice." Clockwork said as be became an old man. "Now that you know there is little chance of learning any other element, you can either continue to try and learn the elements- with little hope of success- or move on to help the next Avatar win the war."

"What!" Danny yelled, eyes flashing a brighter green as green flames sprouted in the darkness around them, angry that Clockwork would ask him to leave. "I'm staying here! Why is this even in question?" He couldn't leave this time period, he liked it here. He knew people here. Roku was here, Ming was here…

"I'm not even sure if I want to move on at _all_, Clockwork. This- what you've given me here- is great. I haven't felt this way since- well since the Nasty Burger-"

"You agreed to help the people of this world. By coming with me, and by being put into another world, you put me in charge of your fate. Whether or not you help the next Avatar is not in question. The question is when.

"If you do choose to stay, you will only stay until you either master all the elements, or until you learn you cannot."

"And I can't go now! Roku hasn't even finished teaching me firebending."

The old ghost closed his eyes.

"Roku can no longer train you."

"What!" Danny shouted again, flames growing larger. "You can't do that Clockwork! You can't- "

"Avatar Roku is dead." Clockwork said, becoming a small child again. All the flames extinguished and Danny stumbled backwards.

"W-what… No, he can't be." Danny held back tears.

"The eruption was too much. Firelord Sozin came to help, but ended up betraying him. He allowed Roku to suffocated and be buried in ash."

"No… You're wrong! He's the Avatar! He can handle a volcano!" Danny closed his eyes and clenched his fist.

"Danny, he's gone."

He almost turned around. He almost went back.

_"_I could have helped him_. _I could have saved him." Danny fell to his knees and a tear streamed down his cheek. "I'm as much to blame as Sozin."

"No, Danny. You are not. You can't think like that." Clockwork said; and he was right of course. But Danny couldn't hear him over the rage that began to build up inside of him.

Flames began to rise around them again.

Danny opened his furious eyes and looked up to Clockwork.

"You did it again." He got up to his feet. "You did this to me _again!"_ Danny lunged at Clockwork, who disappeared just as Danny reached him.

Danny fell to the ground, and pounded the floor.

"Choose, Danny." Clockwork's body-less voice echoed through Danny's dream.

Danny's answer seemed obvious.

"I choose to stay!" Danny shouted into the Abyss.

.

. . .

.

"I choose to stay!" Danny yelled as he woke, sitting up in a bed, covered in cold sweat.

Danny was panting as he looked around him. He was in a wooden room, the bed he was in next to a window that showed a small town. He could see the sun was beginning to lower in the sky.

A balding man in green robes peaked his head into the room.

"Hello!" He said, startling Danny.

"I, uh, found you passed out on the side of the road this morning. None of us here recognized you, so we thought you must be a traveler, and we decided to give you some hospitality."

Danny wiped his forehead with his arm.

"Thank you."

"No problem. I heard a shout, are you alright?"

"Yeah."

"Just a bad dream?"

"Yeah," Danny said, putting his face in his hands; feeling that his cheeks were wet from tears. "A really bad dream."

* * *

**A/N: Next chapter should be going up soon. **

**But if you review, it will go up even faster!**

**So, I've got a new title. "Not the End of Me." You like it? Based it off the song in the Pan trailer. "_This is not the end of me, this is the beginning."_**** Damn that's a catchy song. Great, now it's stuck in my head. Go check out the Pan trailer if you don't know what I'm talking about.**

**By the way, should I be putting a disclaimer? I used to for all my stories, but I really don't think it's that necessary. Isn't it kind of obvious I don't own DP or ATLA? And I'm not making any money off this. *shrugs***


	6. Airbending Training

**Airbending Training**

"Rong, our strange visitor is awake!" Jia told his wife as he walked into the next room.

Rong was stopped setting the table and turned around. "Good; will he be staying for supper?"

"He hasn't eaten anything since at least this morning, so yes, if that's alright with you?"

"I would be delighted!" Rong smiled.

In a blur, the stranger excited their son's room.

"Oh, hello!" Rong began walking towards Danny, but he kept walking. "I'm Rong…"

She stopped talking when Danny exited the small house.

Rong looked over to Jing, met with the same puzzled and confused look. Jia followed him out.

"Are you sure you don't want any supper?" Jia asked. "My wife makes lovely roast duck!"

Danny stopped and looked back at the man.

Jia was a forty-something earth kingdom fisher with greying black hair. He wasn't a rich man, but he was one of the best fishermen in the village, and he had a nice family. He and his wife had their third child last year, and their oldest son wasn't much younger than Danny.

When Jia left to work early in the morning—the best time to catch an open crested salmon—and saw this strange teen lying on the side of the road, he immediately decided to help him.

"Thanks you, for giving me a bed and everything, but I really need to be going now." Danny said. Jia nodded.

"Alright. Do you need anything for your journey ahead?"

"Actually," Danny said, turning around, "you wouldn't happen to know where the Southern Air Temple is, would you?"

Jia smiled.

"You're in luck. I'm one of the few in my village to visit the mountain ranges the Air Temple sits on." Jia disappeared back into his house and emerged and few minutes later with a map. He spread it out on the ground and pointed to their location on their map.

"We are here." He pointed at Whale Tail Island on the map. "And here is the Southern Air Temple. Its South West of our island, and about a days worth of travel by sea. I know a few guys going to this island here tomorrow, so you could probably—"

"That won't be necessary." Danny told him, standing up. "Again, thanks for everything. I can take it from here."

"Not a problem." Jia said, and bowed. Danny bowed back, and Jia turned back to his house. When he looked back to the stranger, he was gone.

.

**. . .**

.

Danny was once again in the sky, following the sun westwards as it set, trying not to think about what he had just learned.

But he couldn't help it.

Maybe it was just a dream? Maybe a nightmare brought up by his dread.

No. It felt too unnatural to be just an average nightmare. Clockwork had really talked to him. Roku was really dead.

Where did that leave him? Everything he had thought could happen had just changed. Everything depended on Roku; his training, his housing, finding Ming…

How was he going to find Ming? The task seemed impossible now. He could not train with Roku, therefore he would likely stay and train at the Southern Air Temple for what could be the next year.

Unless Clockwork was right, and he could only bend fire; and Danny prayed that Clockwork was wrong. Not that he was that excited and eager to learn the other elements, but if he could not prove that he could airbend, Clockwork will send him to the next Avatar.

Danny couldn't let that happen. He felt at peace here; he didn't want to be plunged into some war. Not to mention he wanted to find Ming, figure out if anything would come of that kiss that she had given him.

Even if he could airbend, he would have to stall his training to stay here longer. Take long breaks between practices, maybe even a little "vacation" to find Ming and the others, make sure they're all okay.

Roku told him it took twelve years for him to completely master all the elements. Hopefully that will happen to Danny.

.

.

.

It was night by the time Danny found Southern Air Temple. He passed over the sea and land until a distinctive mountain range could be seen in the distance. Then Danny just had to find the right mountain; which would seem difficult in the dark, but given Danny's heightened vision in his ghost form, along with the slightly fire-lit Temple, it didn't take too long.

Danny landed in the courtyard and looked up at the large structures. He tried to think of where Gyatso normally slept; he remembered which tower it was, and what floor, but the room was a bit fuzzy from when he and Roku went to Gyatso.

He became invisible—to avoid startling anyone—and phased through the wall of the tower. Danny emerged from the wall, still invisible, and looked around the room that he was in. The monk in the bed was facing towards Danny, and snoring quite loudly.

Danny floated through the door and into the hall, becoming visible again. He sighed and started walking down the hallway, peaking his invisible, intangible, head through each door.

He heard footsteps further down the hall and immediately became invisible. Danny turned his head, and saw none other than Gyatso walking down the hall. Danny stepped to the side to let Gyatso pass, and followed him outside. Gyatso stopped in the courtyard and looked up at the crescent moon in the sky.

Danny hid behind a tree as he became human, and then walked towards Gyatso.

"Monk Gyatso…" Danny said, and Gyatso jumped in surprise. He turned around and looked at Danny in surprise.

"Danny! What are you doing here?" Gyatso walked over to meet Danny. "And where's Roku?"

Danny looked away from Gyatso.

"Roku's gone." He told him.

"Gone?" Gyatso was taken aback. "What do you… What do you mean?"

"He's dead—"

"What? But how—"

"The volcano on his island." Danny explained. "It erupted, and he… He didn't make it."

Gyatso looked back up at the moon, grief clearly showing on his face. Danny could tell he just lost a life long friend.

"How long ago was this?"

"Last night."

Gyatso's head snapped towards Danny.

"Last night? How on earth did you get here so fast? And how did you get up here?" Gyatso looked around. "Is Fang with you?"

Danny shook his head.

"No. I don't know what happened to Fang." Danny wasn't sure how to explain this without giving away his secret, but he had to think of something. "Clockwork helped me."

Gyatso's confusion seemed to fade away.

"Ah. I actually came out here because I thought I saw something flying up here. I'd assume that was you and the spirit Clockwork, then?"

"Yes. He wants me to begin learning airbending." Danny lied, getting straight to the point for why he was here.

"Of course." Gyatso said. "It is the next step in your Avatar training, after all.

Gyatso showed Danny to the room he would be staying in while he trained. Danny thanked Gyatso, and threw himself onto the bed.

Gyatso began to leave, but then stopped at the doorway.

"I'm sorry Danny."

Danny looked up at him.

"Sorry for what?" He asked.

"I was so caught up in my own grief when you told me, I forgot to ask if you are alright." Gyatso said. "You must have grown fairly close to him after all this time."

Danny stared at the floor, not sure what to say. Of course he wasn't okay, but for some reason he didn't want to say it.

"Yeah, I'm fine." Danny reassured, somewhat to himself.

"Are you sure?" Gyatso asked. Danny laid down on the bed, facing away from Gyatso.

"Yes. Good night, Gyatso." He said.

Gyatso could see that he wanted to be alone, and so he closed the door, and said,

"Good night, Danny." As he left to grieve on his own.

.

**. . .**

.

"We're starting with _this_?" Danny grumbled as he looked at his old foe, the airbending gates. Gyatso chuckled.

"Of course. This is where all the students begin." Gyatso said. "It teaches the most fundamental techniques of airbending."

Danny sighed and scratched at his clothes. He was currently wearing the standard yellow and orange airbender's clothes, and he felt like an idiot. The colors just felt too bright for him. Although they did give him room to move, in these clothes he felt he could be more flexible and quick with his stances without tearing fabric at un-stretchable seams.

Gyatso sent a blast of air into the gates, causing them all to spin.

" Airbending is about spiral movements. When you meet resistance, you must be able to switch directions at a moments notice." Gyatso looked to Danny. "I believe you remember what you need to do?" He asked. Danny nodded and took a deep breath in before running into the maze of spinning gates.

"Agh!" He yelled as he slammed into one of the first spinning gates. He stumbled forward before getting pushed to the side by another gate, which launched him into another, and that one threw him out of the circle.

Danny groaned and Gyatso came over to help him up.

"You can't force your way through. The trick is to flow through it, like a leaf through a hurricane." He told Danny as he pulled him to his feet.

Danny looked at the gates as Gyatso sent another gust of wind through them. He started running at the gates, realizing that his enhanced reflexes could give him an edge if he concentrated. They did help a few more steps in, before Danny was once again tumbled through and out of the gates.

He got up and rubbed his bruised shoulder, as he got ready for the next go.

And the next.

And the next.

And the next.

Every time Danny felt like he was going a step farther, he was thrown a step back. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn't make it any more than half way through!

When he was thrown out headfirst, for what felt like the hundredth time, he pounded his fist in frustration.

He was never going to be able to do this! What if he couldn't get any farther than this in his airbending training?

Danny looked up at the still-spinning airbending gates with determination in his eyes.

_No._

He _had _to get further.

If he was stuck here, at the airbending gates, for the next few days, then Clockwork—who Danny felt was probably watching this—would deem that Danny could not airbend, could not be taught airbending and therefore, with nothing left to do here, he would have to move on to help the next Avatar.

But he _did_ have something left to do here; but Clockwork didn't see it that way. Danny wanted to try and start over here. He had to find Ming.

So he was going to get through these gates.

One way, or another.

Danny's eyes flashed green as he ran into the gates. When he felt a gate touching his shoulder, it became intangible; and Danny spun in the direction of the gate for some show.

He did this for every gate that got in his way, until he reached the other side of the circle and jumped through.

Gyatso ran to the other side to congratulate him.

"Very good, Danny!" He said excitedly, putting his hand on Danny's shoulder. "Just do that one more time, and we'll start on basic forms."

Danny smiled at the monk.

"No problem."

.

.

.

Despite Danny's pleas, Monk Gyatso insisted on meditating for the rest of the day, and then move on to basic airbending forms the next.

"Air is a element of freedom." Gyatso explained. "Therefore, it is necessary for anyone wishing to learn it to get into the mindset of freedom. Meditation will allow your spirit to wander, like the air around us."

Gyatso led Danny to a small gazebo-type structure with several other monks and children meditating there. Not wanting to make a sound, Gyatso motioned Danny to sit and use the breathing techniques Gyatso had instructed him to use before they had arrived.

Danny sat and closed his eyes. He took a deep breath in, and a deep breath out. Gyatso explained that the key to meditating was to clear ones mind, and completely relax.

This felt nearly impossible for Danny. How could he clear his mind when so much was on it? The closest he could get to clear his mind was to concentrate on clearing his mind; but then his mind wasn't clear, because he was thinking about clearing his mind.

Was he even doing this right? He fidgeted a little in his uncertainty. Danny decided to just sit still, and pretend to know what he was doing. The sooner Gyatso thought Danny had meditation down, the sooner he could move on to the next step in his airbending training.

Hours past, and his body was beginning to cramp up from the lack of movement. Danny couldn't take it any longer, and stood up to stretch his legs. He walked out of the little structure, began walking back to the tower he was staying in.

He felt a hand on his shoulder, and he turned his head to see Gyatso.

"Oh, hey." Danny said, turning around, rubbing his neck. "Sorry I left, I just couldn't sit still any longer! And I was trying to clear my head of all my thoughts, but I couldn't do it. It feels impossible!"

Gyatso smiled and put his hand back on Danny's shoulder as they began to walk.

"It's all quiet alright. I didn't expect you to master meditation on your first day. Most people take years to clear their minds, and I'm surprised you were able to sit there as long as you did." Gyatso chuckled. "You should have seen Roku when he was first taught meditation. He walked out after the first ten minutes!"

Danny smiled and they continued back to his quarters. It was already beginning to get dark, so a tired and bruised Danny decided to retire to his room. They parted ways, and Danny closed the door behind him.

He sat on his bed for a while, contemplating an idea that swirled around in his head.

Danny wanted to go flying.

For leisure.

Which would actually be the first time he had done that for almost two years. Before, he had almost no choice. He had people to save, and places to be. But now, he needed to let out some pent up anger and grief. He needed to feel the wind on his face, stretch the ol' flying muscle. After all, it would seem as though Danny Phantom was back in action, and so he would need to start stretching and exercising his wings again.

The familiar white halo traveled over his body. Once he was fully transformed, he flew through the wall and launched himself into the night sky. He decided it would be best to fly away from the air temple, so that a wandering eye, or flying monk, would not see him.

As soon as he was out of sight, he began to twirl, and loop, and soar through the night sky at incredible speeds. He stopped for a moment and looked at his hand. He began to make it glow green with ectoplasmic energy before launch and green orb into the sky, which exploded like a firework around him.

Danny smiled as small green embers floated downwards before disappearing. Danny held his hands apart in front of him, and both began to glow as he summoned a large ball of energy between them. The orb sparked as it continued to grow to the size of a beach ball. He threw it towards a cliff side on a nearby mountain. The ball hit an overhanging rock, and an explosion shook the mountain as part of the rock crumbled and the pieces rolled down.

"Wow." Danny said, looking at the rubble. "If only my firebending was that powerful." He stared at what was left of the boulder, and a thought came to him. Clockwork told him that his bending would be more powerful in his ghost form….

How powerful?

Danny got into a floating stance, and did a side kick at the mountainside. A huge, green ball of fire erupted from his foot and was launched at the snowy peak. Once it hit, there was a huge "_BANG_" and fire spread to the trees around the area of impact.

"Shit!" He yelled as he flew down to the small forest fire. "Shit shit shit shit shit…" Danny landed close to the fires and stared at the flames. "What do I do… what do I do?"

He looked at the snow that was not yet melted around the trees, something that would change soon, and he got an idea. Danny thought back to the basic waterbending forms Roku showed him while trying to decide his core element, and got into a back stance.

He closed his eyes and, slowly at first, began bring his arms forward with his body, and slowly back. Pushing and pulling. He did this for a while, almost warming up, before opening his eyes and throwing his arms up and in the direction of the fire.

Miraculously, the snow on the ground followed his movements into the air, and onto the trees! Well, some of them anyways. And they didn't extinguish the flames as well as he hoped. Danny sighed. This wasn't going to work… Not with this little of snow.

Danny only had to look up the mountain for more snow, tons of it, in fact. He was surprised that the sound of his initial fire-blast didn't cause an avalanche.

_That the sound didn't cause an avalanche._

Danny smacked himself in the head for being so stupid. He flew up into the air, and up the mountain. When he was at the very peak, he let loose his ghostly wail down the mountain. Sure enough, a wave of snow made its way down the mountain, and extinguished the fire. Unfortunately, his wail also caused the destruction of a small patch of forest in front of him.

"Oops…" Danny muttered. He had forgotten how powerful his that could be. And how draining it was on him…

Danny slowly floated down and landed on the ground. It felt like he just spent the entire day holding up a boulder. He waited for the rings to come and turn him back, dreading the hike back to the Air Temple. But they didn't appear. He was still in his ghost form.

That was curious. Good, but curious.

Had he somehow grown in strength in his ghost form as he grew in age? Even though he hadn't used his powers in so long? Maybe he just had better endurance.

Whatever the reason, Danny was grateful he could still fly back to the Air Temple. Once he was back in his room, he collapsed on his bed and immediately fell asleep

.

.

.

The next few days were frustrating for Danny, and worrisome for Gyatso. Gyatso had begun showing Danny the basic stances and forms key to airbending, yet Danny couldn't perform the simplest airbending maneuver. He couldn't even conjure up a slight breeze!

Whenever Danny became frustrated, Gyatso made him stop and meditate, (which Danny was beginning to figure out, but really couldn't stand doing it for more than half an hour) or he would show him around the temple.

He would show him where the flying bison were kept, the kitchen where they made their famous fruit pies—one of which Gyatso graciously offered to Danny, who gratefully accepted—and the airball court; where several kids asked Danny to play, who denied the requests based on the fact that he currently couldn't airbend (although he was sure he could easily take them on in his ghost form).

The area of the temple that Danny was the most interested in though was a room, locked by a huge, round, intricate looking lock. When Danny asked Gyatso about it, he explained,

"In there is the air temple sanctuary. It can only be opened by bending air into the two pipes on either side." Gyatso said. Danny began walking towards the door.

"So can we go inside?" Danny asked. Gyatso frowned.

"No. Only the Avatar and a member of the Council of Elders, such as myself, can go inside." He told him.

"Well, I _am_ the Avatar." Danny said in a matter-of-fact kind of way. Gyatso laughed.

"Yes, I guess you are. But this room is not for you. It's for the next Avatar in the cycle; who is, in fact, an airbender."

Danny looked at the door one last time before following Gyatso back into the courtyard.

"Shall we try again?" Gyatso said, and Danny nodded while getting into his stance.

.

.

.

Danny collapsed onto his bed. Nearly three weeks have passed, and still nothing. He had even mastered the majority of the basic techniques, but somehow airebending escaped him.

Gyatso assured him that he would eventually succeed, but Danny was beginning to have doubts; and he was worried that Clockwork was having doubts too.

It was coming to the point where Danny was worried Clockwork was going to come any day. Every tingle in his chest, heightened heartbeat, tickle in his throat, he was worried it was the medallion on his chest, activating some sort of time-change.

He laid awake in his bed for hours, a hand over the medallion on his chest, dreading that something would happen. He was exhausted, but he just couldn't sleep. Danny eventually sat up in his bed, deciding that he could use a short flight around the mountain range to settle his mind.

Danny stood up, went ghost, and flew through the wall. As he flew into the night sky, before he gained any distance from the temple, he stopped. An idea had entered his mind. Danny started flying back towards the temple.

He was out, he was in his ghost form, and he was curious. Danny could go check out the air temple sanctuary. He really wanted to know what was in there, and while it would take an air bender to open the door, he just had to phase through it.

Danny smiled as he floated through the building and up to the door, and paused before entering.

Was this wrong? He was about to enter somewhere sacred against the wishes of the people who kept it. Only the Council of Elders or the Avatar should enter…

'_But I __am__ the Avatar.'_ Danny thought firmly as he phased through the door and landed on the cold stone floor. The room was pitch dark, so Danny had to light it up by making his hand glow with ectoplasm.

"Whoa…" A vast array of statues emerged in the green light, expanding upwards in a spiral. Danny walked through the statues, looking at each one and admiring their detail.

While Danny was looking at one statue adorning a wolf pelt, he bumped into one. Danny stumbled backwards in surprise, and looked up at the statue.

"Roku…" Danny whispered as he looked at the statue of his deceased friend.

"These must be statues of all the Avatars." Danny thought out loud. He looked around the room, then up at the never-ending spiral of statues.

If he followed this spiral, would he eventually reach the first Avatar? This idea intrigued him, but as he was about to start floating upwards, the eyes on Roku's statue lit up in a bright blue glow.

"Ah!" Danny fell backwards in surprise. The glow from his hand faded, and he was briefly sent into darkness before the entire room lit up from the eyes of each Avatar.

"Danny." Roku's voice echoed through the room.

"Roku?" Danny gasped and got to his feet. He looked around the room. "Where are you? H-how are you doing this?"

"I am in the spirit world." Roku's voice seemed to come from all around him. "I live on through the Avatar's next reincarnation, an airbender name Aang. I am able to speak to you through the spiritual connection in this sanctuary."

"Roku…" Danny started. "I am so sorry that I didn't help you. I have all these powers, and I could have—"

"Danny, stop." Roku told him and the halfa looked to the statue of the former Avatar. "You must not blame yourself for my end. It was destined to happen, even if tried to stop it. There was nothing you could do. And if you were there, Sozin would have seen you, and seen a new threat to his plans. He would have actively sought to end you."

"But I could have—"

"Danny." Roku's voice became louder and stern. "Everything is as it should be."

Danny sighed and looked down to the floor. That sounded like something Clockwork would say. He knew Roku was right, but somewhere in his mind, he still felt as though he could have done something.

Roku's voice sounded again.

"I have come to tell you that it is time for you to move on."

Danny's head shot up.

"No…"

"It has become clear to Clockwork that you are unable to airbend. Any more time spent here, will be time wasted."

"No, no, no I just need more time! More training! I know I can do it—"

"Danny, you know that you don't. You are stalling—"

"I don't want to go, Roku!" Danny shouted. "I don't want to leave! I felt welcomed here, I need to find Ming and make sure she's okay, and—"

"Ming is fine, Danny. She is safe with Ta Min."

"No, please!" Danny yelled as the eyes on the Avatars around him became brighter. "I need more time!" The medallion on Danny's chest began to tingle, and the CW began to glow.

"Please! You can't do this! Roku, Clockwork, you can't do this!"

"I'm sorry, Danny." Roku said. Clockwork's voice suddenly echoed through the room.

"Everything is the way it should be." The lights became brighter, and then blinding before Danny's world went black.

* * *

**A/N: Sorry for taking so long, but as you can see this was a fairly long chapter. **

**All of these chapters have been basically one big prologue, leading up to the next chapter, so stay tuned!**

**And review please! Tell me what you think, what you like and don't like, if you are confused, ask some questions, anything. **

**Your feedback keeps me going at a faster pace!**


	7. This is The Beginning

**This is The Beginning**

Danny slowly drifted into consciousness. He clutched his head. Everything felt sore. He tried to remember the night before, but was feeling a little fuzzy. He remembered being exhausted but unable to sleep, going out to clear his head, flying a little, going to the sanctuary—

Danny shot up into a sitting position. He tried to look around at his surroundings, but they were shrouded in darkness. He charged his hand up with ectoplasm, and lifted his glowing arm up.

He was still in the sanctuary. Did he fall asleep here?

Then everything came back to him, the eyes glowing, speaking with Roku, and then the light.

Danny stood up and looked around. He walked up to Roku's statue.

Was it all just a dream? He prayed that it was just a dream.

Everything looked the same, and if Clockwork wanted him to bring him to the next Avatar, wouldn't he have actually _moved_ him to the next Avatar? He had to have been dreaming—

Danny jumped and snapped his head towards the door as some sort of horn sounded, and there was a click. Another horn went off, and another. The door slowly began to creep open.

'_Shit!'_ It was probably one of the Council of Elders! If he was caught in here, he would be in major trouble. Without thinking, Danny ran behind one of the statues in the far corner of the room.

"Hello?" A child's voice rang through the room. "Is anyone home?"

'_A kid?'_ Danny thought. '_How'd he get in here?'_

Danny peaked out from behind the statue, and could see only the outlines of three figures. They began to advance.

"Statues?" A boy said, who sounded older than the first, but still young. "That's it? Where's the meat?" This boy was obviously not an air nomad. What was he doing here?

"Who are all these people?" The third figure, a girl, asked.

As they spoke, Danny tried to think about a way out. He could try and sneak past them, but then—

Oh, wait. He has ghost powers.

Danny smiled as he realized he could just become invisible and walk right past them. Almost two years and he was still forgetting he could use his powers to get out of these simple situations.

Danny became invisible, still in human form since going ghost made a very small noise, and ran around the sides of the room and out the door.

"Look! That one's an airbender!" One of them shouted in excitement as Danny left the room.

Once out of the sanctuary, Danny became visible again and began to run to the courtyard. He would fly, but it was already day, and he had no idea how early or late it was. Anyone could be watching.

'_That was close.'_ Danny thought as he slowed to walk when he began to approach the courtyard. Although, now that he thought of it, he wasn't sure why he was afraid to be caught by those kids. He was sure they wouldn't have ratted him out to the Elders, since they would have been in just as much trouble.

As he walked, he noticed something strange: the courtyard was empty. As were the airball courts, and no one was gliding around the temple, not one sky bison!

"Hello?" Danny yelled, looking around. Everything looked different.

Older.

"Oh no…" Danny said, looking at ruins that yesterday were in pristine, well kept condition. He felt week in his knees.

Danny went ghost and took off, looking for any hint of anybody. He flew around the mountain, starting at the top of the temple, and moving down.

This was freaky.

The temple seemed completely deserted!

He didn't care at this point if some flying monk caught him in his ghost form; he just wanted to find a flying monk.

"Ahhhha-ha!" Danny heard someone yell in joy, presumably the child he saw in the sanctuary earlier.

He turned around to look for the boy, and saw a young airbender jumping down the mountainside.

"Hey, wait!" Danny yelled, but the airbender didn't seem to hear him. Danny flew down to pursue the boy, who just went into a building with a cloth roof. He landed in front of the entrance, became human, and started shifting through the cloth hanging from the ceiling.

"Hey, kid!" Danny yelled again, and stopped when he saw the boy kneeling on the floor. "Hey, what happened here? The temple looks…" Danny looked up at the rest of the room. There was red armor and bones scattered throughout.

"…deserted."

At the center of this horrible scene, in a pile of snow, was a corpse in Air Nomad garb. Around his neck was a familiar wooden necklace, with three spirals carved into the main pendant.

"Gyatso…" Danny muttered as he stepped backwards in shock.

"Hey Aang," The other boy entered the tent entered. "Find my dinner yet?" He did a double take when he saw Danny.

"Hey, who are you?" He asked in a raised voice laced with paranoia, but Danny didn't notice him. The boy looked down at Aang, who was crying into his hands.

"What did you —" He began an accusation, but was stopped short when he noticed the atrocity around him, and Gyatso's corpse in the center of it all. "Oh, man..." He went up to the crying Aang while Danny continued to back up. He meant to back out of the building, but he hit a corner instead. Danny turned around to the corner and vomited.

"Come on, Aang, everything will be alright." The teen, who Danny could assume was Water Tribe because of his blue furs, put his hand on the crying boy's shoulder. "Let's get out of here."

Aang's arrows and eyes began to glow the same incandescent blue that Danny had seen in sanctuary when Roku spoke to him.

Danny gasped as he watched the child rise, fist balled in fury. Wind started swirling around him. Though from where Danny was standing it was just a breeze, he could tell from the teen's motions and clothes that the current was stronger where the airbender was. You could physically see the airflow form a sphere around the distressed child.

"Aang, come on!" The other boy said, trying unsuccessfully to calm him down. "Snap out of it!"

The sphere rapidly expanded, destroying the surrounding building and sent the two teens flying.

While the Water Tribe guy was stopped by one of the still-standing walls, and got a grip on a rock to prevent being blown away.

Danny was not so lucky. He was flung through a gap where the entrance once was, and sent flying through the air. Danny had little time to react as his body rapidly approached the mountainside leading up to the sanctuary.

The last thing he saw was the white ring started to form around his waist before he felt a sharp pain in his head, and then darkness.

.

.

.

"Hioijlllnnluu?" Danny heard a muffled female voice echo gibberish throughout his head. He squinted his eyes open, and saw an incredibly bright light.

"Hiayllo?" Her speech slowly began to change from gibberish to words.

"Ugh…" Danny groaned as he rubbed his head and slowly propped himself up on his elbow.

God, did he have a headache. And his ears were ringing from… he actually couldn't remember what happened before he was knocked out. The ringing began to go away, and he was able to hear everything well once more.

A little too well, in fact.

He looked towards the source of the voice, and saw three blurs rushing towards him.

"Hey, are you alright?" The girl yelled. Danny dropped back down and put his hands over his ears. Over the years, he had learned to control his enhanced senses, and got used to things like his over-powered hearing; but she still sounded abnormally loud! Like she was speaking into a megaphone.

"That's the guy that was with Aang before his Avatar-spirity-stuff happened." The Water Tribe boy said, though to Danny it felt like he was screaming. As they got closer, it got worse.

"I am so sorry!" Aang said, seemingly yelled into Danny's ear, at least from his perspective. Danny winced and got up again.

"It's fine. I'm fine." Danny said as he started getting to his feet, clutching his head. "I'm not sure why you're apologizing though…"

"You don't look fine." The girl said. Danny stumbled and she caught him before he fell back to his knees.

"Thanks." He looked up at her, and she gasped.

"What?" Danny looked at the other two, who had the familiar face of pity and horror that other people would give him when Dash beat him up. "What?" He asked them. Aang pointed to the right side of his forehead, and Danny took the hint and reached for his head.

He felt something warm and sticky on his forehead. Danny brought his hand in front of his face and saw blood on his fingers.

"Oh."

"You definitely aren't okay." She said.

"How bad is it?" He asked, and she gave her best fake smile.

"Uh… it's not that bad—"

"No, it's pretty bad." The boy said.

"Sokka!" She yelled. Danny winced.

"What?" Sokka asked, shrugging. "It's true. That's a really bad gash."

"So I should probably sit down?"

"Yeah, you probably should." She told him as she helped him ease into a resting position against a rock. "Aang, can you go get a cloth from Appa?"

The airbender nodded, and was about take off when Danny held up his hand to stop him.

"Wait, I got this!" He untied his orange belt and asked the girl for help tying it around his wound.

"Thanks." Danny said, and he put out his hand. "I'm Danny, by the way."

The girl grabbed his forearm, and did the same strange handshake Roku did when they first met.

"You're welcome, I'm Katara." Katara said. She motioned to Sokka. "That's my brother, Sokka," He raised his hand to acknowledge this. "and that's Aang." She pointed to the airbender.

"Nice to meet you all." Danny said, wiping blood off his brow. "Can you guys tell me what—"

"Are you an airbender?" Aang asked eagerly.

"What?" Danny asked, cocking his head to the side curiously.

"Your clothes? Are you an airbender?" He asked again.

"Oh…" Danny looked down at his orange and yellow clothes. "No, I'm not. I'm a… I'm just a traveler." He lied, "And the Air Nomads are fairly hospitable. They let me stay here and gave me some clothes to wear—"

"The air nomads were here?" Aang asked excitedly, running closer to Danny. "When? Where did they go?"

Danny looked up at Aang in confusion.

"Yeah they were here. This is the Southern Air Temple. Where would they be…" Danny stopped as everything began to come back to him. Roku and Clockwork speaking with him, the bright light, waking up in the sanctuary. "Hang on– when I woke up this morning, the Temple looked deserted." Following Aang into the tented building. "I saw you, and I was going to ask you about them. And…

"Wait–" Danny remembered seeing Aang's arrows and eyes light up in the same way Roku's statue did. "You're the Avatar, aren't you?"

Aang nodded. Then Danny remembered the corpses.

"Oh, man…" Danny put his hands on his head. "Gyatso."

Aang's eyes widened.

"You know who Gyatso is?" Aang yelled, surprised. Danny scrunched his face in pain from the noise.

"Ouch, not so loud!" Danny said.

"Sorry…"

"And yes, I know who Gyatso is. _I knew _Gyatso."

"What?!" Aang yelled.

"How is that possible?" Sokka asked. Danny put his hands on his head.

"Argh! What do you mean? And what happened here?" He asked.

Aang looked down in dismay.

"Monk Gyatso lived one hundred years ago." Sokka told him. "How could you have _possibly_ known him?"

"_One hundred years?_" Danny yelled, standing up too quickly. "How is that…" He swayed as stars began to form in his eyesight. "Whoa…" He put his hand on his head as the world began to spin. "One hundred… that can't…"

"Uh-oh," Katara said as she and Sokka began walking towards him. They both reached out to grab him. "I think he's going to fain—"

.

.

.

Danny opened his eyes, and rolled his head to the side.

"Ouch…" He said aloud. His head was still pounding.

He was lying on leather, head propped up with some rolled up cloth. There was a rim surrounding where he was lying. Danny sat up and looked around.

Surrounding what turned out to be a saddle was white fur, and in the front horns.

He was on a sky bison.

Danny looked behind him to see he was still at the Southern Air Temple. Sokka and Katara were about thirty yards away from the bison. It looked like they were fighting.

Aang was chasing a lemur around the two as they fought.

He remembered what Sokka had said about Gyatso; _one_ _hundred _years!

The Avatar looked only twelve! None of this made any sense.

But right now, that didn't matter to Danny. He just wanted to get back to the other time. Danny slowly stood up, climbed out of the saddle and slid off the bison's tail.

The sky bison gave out a groan from Danny's sliding as Danny landed on his tailbone, alerting the three. Katara ran over to Danny, and Sokka crossed his arms and walked over while Aang just stayed behind, rubbing his shoulder nervously as the winged lemur landed on it.

"What are you doing? You need to be resting!" Katara shouted

"No, I'm fine." Danny lied. "I was just going back to the room I was staying in." He said, continuing to lie; he was actually going to head back to the sanctuary, and see if he could somehow get into contact with Roku or Clockwork again and convince them to let him go back.

"See, Katara?" Sokka said, motioning his hand in Danny's direction. "He'll be fine."

Katara wasn't convinced.

"Is anybody here with you?" She asked. Danny looked down at his feet.

"No… Just me."

"I'm sorry, but you shouldn't be alone right now." Katara said. "You have a major head injury, and you should come with us. At least until you're better."

Danny sighed. Of course he could insist on staying, lie and tell her that he had someone not far behind him that will be here soon, or make up some other sort of excuse; but Clockwork wanted him to help the new Avatar, and the more Danny thought of it, the more he realized there was little to no chance he could convince Clockwork to let him go back. He wasn't even sure he could get into contact again with the ghost of time in the sanctuary.

No, Danny's best bet was finishing what Clockwork wanted to do here, and then asking him to let him go back to before all this. To let him go back to Ming.

"Alright, I'll go with you." Danny said.

Katara gave a triumphant smile while Sokka grumbled.

"Good." She said smugly.

"Just let me go get my things from the room I was staying in."

"Alright." She looked over at Aang. "At least let Aang show you back to the room. Just in case you pass out again."

"Yeah, sure." Danny said. The siblings watched Danny walk over to Aang, and point to the building he was staying in.

"You know Danny's answers to Aang's questions are just going to disappoint him, right?" Sokka asked her.

"I know." Katara said, looking down. "But he needs to hear it."

.

.

.

Aang and Danny entered the tattered remains of the entrance to the building. They began walking up the stairs, up to Danny's room.

"So," Aang said, "You said you knew Gyatso? Personally?" He was cautious in his question; Katara explained that Danny might just be confused after hitting his head. Aang didn't want to get his hopes up.

"Uh..." Danny rubbed the back of his neck. "Did I say that? Wow I, uh, must have really hit my head hard, huh?" He laughed nervously while knocking on his head.

"Ow." He rubbed his head. "Yeah, what I meant was— uh… I mean, I knew of him; from my dad– " One _hundred_ years ago. His father would not have been alive. "– Who heard it from his dad." Danny corrected himself. "My grandfather knew him, personally."

Aang perked up.

"Oh, was he an air nomad?"

"Oh, uh, no." Danny said. "Well, he was a nomad, like a traveler, but not an air nomad."

"Oh." Aang said, shoulders slumping.

"Sorry."

"It's okay."

"And you said the Air Nomads were hospitable—"

"Yeah, sorry. Again, I hit my head pretty hard, and I was really confused at the time. I just knew this temple was inhabited by the Air Nomads."

They moved on to the next set of stairs.

"So, you're the Avatar, right?" Danny said. It was his turn to ask questions.

"Yep. That's me."

"Mind if I ask you a question?"

"Yeah, sure."

"How are you so young?" He said, looking at the child before him, who had to be younger than him. "You guys said Gyatso–" Hold it, Fenton. Touchy subject. "–lived one hundred years ago. The Avatar before you died when Gyatso was alive, so you must have lived the same time as Gyatso. How are you not, like, a hundred years old?"

Aang traced the cracks on the wall as they walked.

"I– I was in a storm. And I lost control." Aang said glumly. "I was plunged into the ocean, and I guess with the help of my Avatar spirit I froze myself and Appa. Katara and Sokka found us frozen in an iceberg, and Katara waterbent me out."

"Wow."

"Yeah."

"I also wondering–" Danny was going to ask if he could tell him what happened to the Airbenders, but Aang already looked depressed from talking about Gyatso, and what happened to him. "–how old are you?"

"Twelve. Well, one hundred and twelve, but–"

"Only twelve?" Danny interrupted, smiling while he pointed at Aang's tattoos. "You mastered airbending at _twelve_? That has to be a record, or something."

Aang's spirit seemed to be instantly lifted, and his face beamed as he gave out a small laugh.

"Yeah, I'm the youngest airbending master in our history."

"Wow." Danny said, as he tripped on a broken step. He caught his balance before he fell. "Ah! I _always_ forget about that step! The next floor is mine."

"Hey!" Aang said, smiling. "The next room was mine!"

"No way!" Danny said, smiling back, but slightly concerned. If Aang lived in his room, would his bag still be there? Especially after one hundred years?

"Race you there!" Aang said, sprinting up the stairs, going at a super-speed with the help of his airbending.

"Hey! No fair!" Danny said, running after him, and stopping on this floor, but Aang kept going to the next one.

"Hey, Aang!" He shouted up the next flight. "You passed… it"

Danny stopped, and stared. Where the door to his room used to be, there was a smooth wall.

"What are you talking about?" Aang said as he descended the stairs.

"My room was right here!" Danny said. He went up to the wall, and pressed his hands against it.

"Wow, you must have hit your head _really_ hard." Aang said. "There has never been a door on this floor. At least, not when I was here."

Danny continued to stare at the wall. This didn't make any sense. If they reconstructed this area, and tore down his room, they would have at least fixed that step. He stepped back and looked at the entire wall, and noticed that there was still a brown fruit stain in the bottom right corner.

It was _the same wall_!

Was the door just covered?

"Oh, yeah." Danny laughed. "I just remembered… that I was in the room on the floor below. Oops.

"How about you go up to your old room, and check it out? I need some privacy to change clothes anyways."

Aang nodded, and ran up to the next level. When Danny was sure Aang was in the next room, he became intangible and walked through the wall. Sure enough, on the other side of that wall, was his room. And it looked like nothing changed.

_Literally_ nothing had changed! The half finished fruit pie he left next to his bed still looked like it was in its prime! And the several flies buzzing above it were… frozen. Their wings weren't moving, yet they stayed in the air, in the same spot.

This was weird.

The medallion on his chest began to tingle, and the CW began to glow. The flies began buzzing around the fruit pie once again.

Not knowing how long it would be until Aang would check on him in the other room, Danny rapidly took the pictures off the stone shelf next to his bed, and shoved them into his backpack. He pulled out the red clothes he trained in, and was about to change into them when he realized that might not be the best idea, considering Clockwork told him before all this that the war would be against the Fire Nation.

He laid the clothes onto his bed, and pulled out one of the two white t-shirts with a red oval in the center that he had packed. It's been awhile since he'd worn his classic white shirt and jeans combo.

He slipped on his shirt, pulled on the jeans, and flung his backpack onto his shoulders. He became intangible and ran towards the door, but stopped when he noticed a note nailed to the wall. Danny became tangible and tore the note off the wall.

_Danny,_

_The spirit Clockwork came to me in a dream, and told me that _

_you have moved on to help the next Avatar. Though I am saddened and confused about why you won't be completing your airbending training, _

_but if the spirits believe you are ready, I believe you are ready. _

_He told me that your room would be sealed in time until you _

_arrived again, and that I should close the room off to the rest of the world. _

_I do not know how you'll get through this wall, but Clockwork assured me_

_it will be possible._

_ Perhaps we shall meet again once the new Avatar comes of age._

_I wish you the best of luck,_

_ Monk Gyatso_

Danny read the note over again.

'_Perhaps we shall meet again.'_

That was the bit that stuck with Danny. They did meet again of course, but not in the way either of them had planned or hoped.

Danny sighed.

Another friend gone.

He folded the note up. He began putting it in his pocket, but realized he couldn't be caught with this on him. Danny let the paper fall to the floor. He became invisible, then intangible, and walked through the wall, looking around to see if Aang was in the area. Which he was.

Aang was walking down the stairs to the room Danny said he was staying in.

'_Shit!'_

Danny ran, invisible, down the stairs and strait into the door-less room. He became visible and began walking out just as Aang reached the door.

"Ready?" Aang asked.

"Yeah." Danny said, painting from sprinting down the stairs.

"Why are you so tired?" Aang asked.

"Um… I just…" Danny tried to think of an excuse, but couldn't. "Uh… Race you back to your bison!" He yelled, and began sprinting down the stairs. Behind him, he heard Aang laugh as he jetted past him on an air-scooter.

"That's cheating!" Danny yelled and slowed down, knowing that he would lose if he ran or not.

.

.

.

Katara saw Aang approach on a ball of air, with Danny doing a light jog far behind him.

"What are you two doing?" Katara asked Aang as he landed in front of her.

"Racing!" Aang said. "Danny's a lot of fun."

"He shouldn't be running!" Katara said, as Danny arrived next to them. "You shouldn't be running! You probably have a concussion, and need to be resting."

"Look, I'm fine, okay?" Danny said, putting his arms up. He began to sway a little as his wound throbbed on his head, and he became dizzy. Danny put his arms down in defeat.

"Okay, yeah I need to rest."

Katara smiled in a know-it-all kind of fashion, and she helped Danny onto the bison, who they introduced as Appa, and they were off.

Danny leaned back on the saddle, and took one last, long look at the Southern Air Temple as it began to shrink in the horizon.

* * *

**A/N: And we're off! Honestly, the last six chapters have really been one big introduction, and I'm happy to get here. **

** I made some slight changes (mainly grammatical) to some previous chapters, and added the description of Gyatso's necklace to when Danny first meets Roku and Gyatso. I also changed some things, wording and structure, in the first part of the first chapter, since I wrote that YEARS ago and my style has changed since (but I'm too stubborn/lazy to completely re-write it)**

** Some people have been asking about what will happen with Ming and Danny, and I'll just let you all know that her relative will be introduced in Book 2. That gives me time to change my mind, If I want to. **

** Try and guess who it is!**

**And tell me what you think of this chapter, and the story as a whole! **

**Criticism is welcome, as always.**


	8. The Cove of Kyoshi Island

**The Cove of Kyoshi Island**

It was hot.

Unbelievably hot.

Danny opened his eyes and looked around. He was back on Roku's island!

He did it! He couldn't remember how, but somehow he had gotten back to the time he wanted to be in.

But something wasn't right.

Danny looked down at the ground he was standing on. Instead of the soft, dirt pathway that went through the village, there was asphalt. It was a road from his time; yellow stripe and all. Going right through the village. It looked so out of place next to the small huts.

The other thing that bugged him was the heat. While it was normally fairly hot on the tropical Fire Nation island, this was ridiculous. He could feel the hot pavement below him, slowly baking his feet.

Danny looked up the mountain, and saw that smoke was billowing out the top.

He had to get out of here.

Danny tried to lift his feet, but they wouldn't budge.

"What?" He bent down and tugged at feet.

His sneakers seemed to have melted into the asphalt.

When Danny looked up, he was met with a ghastly sight.

The Nasty Burger.

At the end of the road of this Fire Nation village was the half-destroyed Nasty Burger.

His father, mother, Jazz, Sam, Tucker, and Mr. Lancer were all attached to the large tank of at the center of it all.

"No…"Danny struggled to move, to try and save them. "No!"

"You just have to airbend."

Danny spun his torso around.

Ming was standing behind him.

"All you have to do to save them is airbend. Cool the coil down."

"Ming…" Danny reached for her, but she shifted backwards. "But I–I can't! I tried, but I can't" He looked back to the Nasty Burger wreckage, and now two new bodies where attached to the tank.

Roku and Gyatso.

The ground beneath him began to rumble.

Danny thrust his palm forwards to try and conjure something.

"Ming, help me! I can't—"

"Just airbend, Danny." A deeper voice commanded. Danny looked back to where Ming once was, and where Clockwork now floated.

"Clockwork, I can't! You even told me, I can't do it!" He turned back to his family and friends.

Ming now joined them.

Danny looked up to the volcano. Lava spurted upwards, and a cloud of smoke and ash began descending down the slope.

"Please, Clockwork, just help me! Stop time, do something! You have to—"

"You can't do it, Danny." The voice that haunted all his nightmares echoed throughout the island.

A mixture of fear and anger welled up inside him as Danny turned around.

Clockwork was gone.

In the distance, he saw a figure floating over the ocean.

It flew closer, and closer, and it didn't slow down.

Danny cried out as the ghost slammed right into his torso at full speed, knocking him out of his sneakers.

He yelped as the asphalt burnt and scrapped his palms while he skidded to a stop.

"You can't airbend." Dan Phantom, his future evil self, stood over him. "You can't airbend, and you can't save them."

Danny staggered to his feet, and began running towards the Nasty Burger.

The deadly ash cloud was almost upon them.

Dan's hand wrapped itself around Danny's leg, and he was flipped over his head, and slammed him onto his back into the ground behind him.

Danny groaned in pain, and started to push himself up, but Dan put his foot on Danny's chest.

"You're too week."

Danny looked at the desperate faces of his family and friends.

"You can't airbend. You can't save them." The ash cloud covered the Nasty Burger.

"No…" Danny wheezed has he reached out.

The ash cloud was almost to the two of them now.

"And you can't stop yourself from becoming me!" Dan's foot melded into Danny's chest, and soon the rest of his body followed.

As the ash came to bury him, the last thing Danny saw was Dan's grinning face coming to meet his.

"No!" Danny screamed as he was surrounded by darkness.

.

…

.

Aang, Sokka, and Katara were awake, and getting ready to leave the island. Sokka threw the sleeping bags into Appa's saddle while Aang fed the sky bison. Katara went over to wake Danny up, and change his bandages.

It had been two days since they had taken the injured traveler into their group, and though he was strange, he seemed nice enough.

He was quiet, and kept to himself. Although, whenever someone tried to ask him a question about his past, or strike up a conversation with him, he changed the subject, or asked questions of his own.

Mainly about the war. He was surprisingly ignorant about the subject, and asked questions like when the war began and why it was started.

"Because the Fire Nation is a bunch of evil jerks." Sokka told Danny. Danny winced and gave him a funny look.

"That really can't be it. Wars are usually fought over land or… well, usually just land disputes. Did another Nation do something to tick them off? No one just starts a war because they are inherently evil."

"No, nobody did anything. They're just evil." Sokka raised his eyebrow. "What makes you the expert on war, anyways?"

Danny opened his mouth to give him an example of when a war was started over property, but realized he couldn't give any from this world. He put his hands up in defeat.

"Whatever." Danny said as he crossed his arms. Under his breathe, he muttered, "That can't be right…"

The night before, when they stopped at this island, Danny waited until Aang was asleep before approaching Katara.

"Katara?" Danny whispered.

"Yeah Danny?"

"I've been meaning to ask, what happened to the Air Nomads?"

Katara frowned.

"You don't know?"

"No." Danny said. "Since my family were, uh, nomads, we were fairly disconnected from the rest of the world. I didn't know the Southern Air Temple was deserted until I arrived there a few days before you found me."

Katara looked away and sighed.

"The Fire Nation attacked the Air Nation early in the war, and wiped them all out. As far as we know, Aang is the last airbender."

Danny looked over at the sleeping Aang, and shook his head.

"Why did they do that?"

"I don't know." Katara said. "They probably saw the airbenders as a threat. Or they were looking to take out the next Avatar, who they knew was going to be an air nomad. They're hunting Aang now, too; the Fire Lord's son, Zuko, tried to take Aang back at the Southern Water Tribe."

Danny frowned and continued to look at Aang. They soon bid each other good night, and drifted off to sleep.

And now currently, Katara crouched next to Danny, who slept on top of a blanket since they didn't have a fourth sleeping bag.

"No, no." Danny muttered in his sleep. Katara shook him.

"Danny—"

"No!" Danny yelled as he sat up, awake and panting. He pressed his hand over the medallion fused to his chest.

"Danny!"

"Wha– I–" Danny stuttered and mumbled.

"Are you alright?" Katara asked. Aang and Sokka peered over at them.

"Yeah," Danny laid back down. "It was just a dream. A _really _bad dream."

"Alright," Katara said, "we're getting ready to leave. We need to change your bandages."

"Right. Bandages." Danny said, sitting up again as Katara pulled out some cloth from her bag while Danny started unwrapping the last set.

Another strange thing Katara noticed about Danny was how fast his head wound was heeling. When she first unwrapped the Air Nomad belt from Danny's head, she was sure that she would have to put stitches in the gaping wound; but it was much better than she remembered seeing when they first met. It didn't look like it needed stitches, but she would definitely still need to bandage it to stop infection.

The next day, when she helped Danny change bandages for the second time, the wound was already beginning to scab. Katara was beginning to wonder if the wound was ever as bad as she remembered; the pace that this wound was healing was—

"Woah…" Katara said.

"What?" Danny asked, reaching up to touch the wound. "Is something wrong?"

"Well, no. The opposite actually." Katara said while she looked at the fading scab on Danny's head. Some of the tissue was already growing back. This looked like something Katara would see a few weeks after a wound like this was inflicted, not a couple of days! "I don't think you need bandages anymore. You barely have a mark on you!"

"Yeah," Danny said while he rubbed the back of his head. "I heal pretty fast." Another advantage of his ghost powers was his incredibly fast healing factor.

Sokka walked over to the two.

"What's going on?" He asked.

"Danny's head wound has already healed!" Katara said, reaching up to touch where the gash used to be.

"Good." Sokka said. "So we can drop you off in the next village."

Katara glared at Sokka.

"What?" He asked, putting his hands up. "The less weight on Appa, the faster we go!"

"Danny still probably has a concussion! You remember when you slid head first into that glacier, you weren't feeling right for two weeks!"

"Actually, I'm feeling fine." Danny said. While it took normal people weeks to recover from a concussion, it only took a few days for Danny.

"Are you sure?" Katara asked, worried.

"Yeah. But as long as it's not too far out of your way, could you guys give me a lift to my destination?" Danny asked, going off a hunch.

"Sure!" Aang said. "As long as it's on the way to the Northern Water Tribe."

Bingo.

"Hey, what do ya' know," Danny said, putting on a lackluster smile. "I'm heading there too!"

"That's amazing! It's a good thing you bumped into us!" Aang said, ever the optimist, and he jumped on top of Appa. Sokka, the pessimist, raised an eyebrow and crossed his arms.

"Yeah, good thing. Why do you want to go to the Northern Water Tribe?" He asked skeptically.

"Uh," Danny rubbed the back of his neck nervously. "I, uh, think I have an Aunt who lives there. My Aunt Alicia. She's my only living relative left, and I'd like to try and get back in touch with her."

Sokka's expression instantly softened, and Katara put her hand on Danny's shoulder.

"We'll make sure you find her. Sokka and I know what it's like, wanting to reunite with family." She and Sokka climbed into Appa's saddle with Danny following them up.

As he sat down and Appa took off, Danny mentally slapped himself.

How was he going to explain himself once they get to the Northern Water Tribe, and they find there was no Aunt Alicia? Well there is an Aunt Alicia, but she wasn't in this world.

He'd just have to wait and tackle that problem when they got there.

.

.

.

"You do know where you're going, right?" Danny asked as he stared at the ocean below them. They had been over water for hours, and he wasn't sure if they even had a compass. Sokka had a map, but Aang hadn't looked at it since they took off.

"Well, I know it's near water." Aang said, sounding unsure of his navigation skills.

"I guess we're getting close then." Sokka said sarcastically as he continued to analyze the map.

Aang glanced back at Katara, who was sewing a hole in Sokka's pants.

"Momo," He whispered to the lemur on his shoulder, "Marbles please." Momo dove into Aang's shirt, and emerged with a couple of grey spheres.

"Hey Katara! Check out this airbending trick!" Aang held his arms out, one hand in front of the other, and made the marbles spin in a circular motion as he grinned. While Danny was slightly amused, it failed to catch Katara's attention.

"That's great, Aang." Katara said as she continued to sew. Aang's spirits instantly fell.

"You weren't even looking!" He complained. Katara looked up, as if to show he had her attention.

"That's great."

"But I'm not doing it now." His face drooped and he plopped back down.

"Stop bugging her, airhead," Sokka said, placing the map down. "You need to give girls space when they do their sewing."

Katara stopped sewing, and looking at Sokka with an annoyed face.

"What does me being a _girl _have anything to do with sewing?" She asked. Danny took his eyes off the ocean, and fixed them on the two siblings. He could feel a fight coming on.

Sokka put his hands behind his head, and rested back.

"Simple." He said fairly nonchalantly. "Girls are betting at fixing pants than guys, and guys are better at hunting and fighting and stuff like that. It's just the natural order of things."

Danny was fairly taken aback by the sexism, but wasn't that surprised. This seemed like an ancient time; cultural norms were different.

In response to Sokka's statement, Katara put on a false smile.

"All done with your pants!" She said sarcastically as she held up and displayed the ripped area of the cloth. "And look at what a great job I did!" She threw the pants onto Sokka's face.

"Wait, Katara!" Sokka shouted desperately as he struggled to get the pants untangled from his head. "I was only joking! Please, I can't wear this!"

Danny started to laugh, and both Katara and Sokka looked at the boy funny, though both for different reason. Aang even turned around to try and catch sight of the first bought of laughter they had heard from the teen.

Katara was glad that Danny was laughing, but Sokka was angry.

"What's so funny?"

"Nothing, nothing." Danny said, still smiling and waving him away. "It's just that you guys remind me of my friends, Sam and Tucker." The smile on Danny's face instantly disappeared at the mention of their names.

"Well, do your friends happen to have some pants I could borrow?" Sokka grumbled.

"Don't worry, Sokka!" Aang shouted from in front of the saddle. "Where we're going we won't need pants!" Sokka looked curious but worried by this prospect.

"So," Katara asked, trying to get more from Danny than just a laugh and a mention of people from his past. "Are your friends up at the North Pole too?"

Danny looked away from her, back to the ocean.

"No. They're gone." He said quietly.

"I'm sorry." Katara put her hand over her mother's necklace. "Was it the Fire Nation? Your family and friends?"

Danny remained silent. He continued to stare at the ocean rushing below them. For a while, Katara thought he wasn't going to answer.

"I don't want to talk about it." He said finally. Katara closed her eyes.

"I understand."

.

.

.

"So what're we doing here again?" Danny asked, sounding as impatient as Sokka usually was.

"Yeah, didn't we just stop last night?" Sokka said. "Shouldn't we get a little flying done before we camp out again?"

"They're right, Aang." Katara chimed in. "At this rate, we won't even get to the North Pole by spring."

"But Appa's _really_ tired. Aren't you boy?" Aang told them, patting Appa, who gave an unconvincing grunt. Danny crossed his arms, and raised his eyebrow.

"I _said:_ aren't you, boy?" Aang asked his sky bison again. Appa gave a larger grunt, and a half-hearted yawn. Aang smiled over to his skeptical friends.

"Yeah," Sokka said sarcastically, "that was really convincing. Still, hard to argue with a ten ton monster."

Danny shrugged, agreeing with him.

"Look!" Aang yelled as he pointed to the water. Danny's jaw dropped in awe. The largest fish that he had ever seen just emerged. The giant, red, koi fish only spent a few moments in the air, before it dove back into the ocean.

"Woah…" Danny whispered. He knew this world had strange animals; Roku had told him about many of them, and he had seen a few on both Roku's island and the Southern Air Temple; but seeing these animals for the first time never ceased to amaze him.

"That's why we're here!" Aang said enthusiastically as he started to strip. Danny only hoped that he had a pair of trunks on under those robes. "Elephant Koi. I'm going to ride one! Katara, you have to watch me!" He started to run to the water.

"Wait, you're going to ride that thing?" Danny asked Aang. He turned to Sokka and Katara, who looked just as bewildered as him. "Is he really going to—"

"COLD!" Aang yelled as he emerged from the water. He began rapidly swimming towards the Elephant Koi. He dove under the water, and soon erupted back to the surface on top of an Elephant Koi.

Sokka seemed unimpressed, but Katara and Danny both gave an impressed smile. Danny couldn't help but laugh while he watched the young Monk thread in and out of the ocean on the back of the Elephant Koi.

"He's doing it!" Danny said. "He really is crazy, isn't he?"

"Oh, yeah." Sokka said, crossing his arms.

"Whooh! Yeah Aang!" Katara shouted while waving at Aang. Even Momo was excited, jumping up and down as he watched Aang.

Two more Koi emerged from the water behind Aang.

"He looks pretty good out there." Katara said to Sokka.

"Are you kidding?" Sokka said, pointing out to Aang. "The fish is doing all the work!"

There was a rustling behind them, and Danny looked back. Appa seemed to be eating something out of the bushes.

"Uh, guys," Danny said, and the siblings looked over to him, and he pointed to Appa. "Should Appa be…"

Katara gasped and started running over to Appa, Danny following after her to help.

"Appa!" Katara shouted. "Don't eat that!" They both rand over, and tugged at Appa's reigns, and they were slowly able to pull the resistant bison away from the bush.

"Something's in the water!" Danny heard Sokka yell from the beach. Danny and Katara looked at each other then ran back to the beach.

"What's happening?" Danny asked.

"What's wrong?" Katara said.

"Aang's in trouble!" Sokka said as he pointed to the water. One of the Koi fish was dragged underwater by a shadow in the lagoon.

"Aang! Get out of there!" Katara shouted.

"Aang!" They all began to shout, waving their hands in the air and repeating his name. They saw Aang look over to them, and wave.

He thought they were waving him on.

The shadow was getting closer.

"Aang!" Katara shouted again, as loud as her lungs would allow.

The shadow was almost upon him.

"Get back here!" Sokka yelled, and there was a yelp as Aang was suddenly thrown off the Elephant Koi as the fish was dragged underwater.

"Oh, boy." Danny muttered, backing up. An enormous, webbed dorsal fin shot out of the water.

He was getting ready to go ghost in order to help Aang.

'_Well, it been nice to have a secret identity.'_

Danny wondered if they would still accept him; continue to let them travel with them. If not, he'd just follow them, invisible in the air. It would be exhausting, but as long as—

Wait.

Danny may not have to intervene after all.

Aang was using his airbending to run at lightning speed over the water, away from the creature, which was in hot pursuit of the boy.

The airbender finally escaped to the shore, running right into Sokka. They both tumbled to the ground, and into the trees. Danny and Katara ran over to their fallen friends.

"Jesus Christ… Did you see the size of that?" Danny said in awe as he pulled Aang up and looked back to where the beast had disappeared.

"Who?" Katara asked as she helped her brother up.

"Never mind." Danny said, as he dragged his hand over his face and waved his other hand at her. "That was too close."

Katara looked back to the water as Aang got dressed.

"What was that thing?" She asked.

"I don't know." Aang answered, pulling on her pants.

"Well, let's not hang around to find out." Sokka said, rubbing the sand off his hands. "Time to hit the road."

"I couldn't agree more." Danny said. The sooner they got away from that thing—

The attack came suddenly, from above. Someone grabbed Danny 's arms from behind and put a blindfold over his face. Reacting as quickly as he had been attacked, Danny instinctively phased through his opponents grip, and ripped the cloth off his eyes.

Danny spun around and saw a girl in green armor, and elaborate face paint. He jumped back as the teen swiped at him with a fan.

"Jeez, what's your problem?" He said, dodging a kick. He looked at the warrior's face for an answer, but instead saw her eyes twitch over Danny's shoulder. He recognized this cognition immediately,– from months of fighting groups of ghosts at once– and shot himself backwards to the ground; narrowly missing the kick of a girl who had snuck up behind him.

Danny kicked the legs of the girl in front of him, knocking her down. He slid away from the two girls; now facing the back of the new attack-e.

While Danny couldn't go ghost, in fear of blowing his secret-identity, he could siphon his powers into human form. So, he just had to access a bit of his super-strength, and…

The girl spun around just as Danny kicked her in the stomach, sending her flying into a nearby tree. She slumped down into unconsciousness.

The group of warriors where stunned by this display long enough for Danny to look around those who surrounded him. Including the girl knocked out under the tree, there were five teenage warriors surrounding him; all girls, and all in the same green armor and white and red war paint.

"What do you want?" Danny asked as he dodged a punch, and ducked under another girl's kick. Next to the Air Bending Gates, this was easy.

Instead of answering, the warriors continued to send attacks his way. While Danny jumped back from a side-kick, he received quite a heavy blow from the back, knocking him forward into the fist of one of the girls. The wind knocked out of him, Danny froze for a second to catch his breath.

A second was too long.

He felt a sharp pain in the back of his head before blacking out.

* * *

**A/N: First of all, I do not own Danny Phantom or Avatar the Last Airbender. I should start doing disclaimers more often.**

**Next: Sorry about the long delay; life, amiright?**

**Anyways, there was originally more to this chapter, which I transferred over to the next. It was just getting too long; I was on page eleven, and I was still only on introductions to Kyoshi Island. No idea when the next update will be, still pretty busy with school, commissions, and I was recently cast in a local TV show (and now I'm writing for it too) So that's going to take up a lot of my time. But, I'll try and get to this when I can.**

**Exciting things coming up… exciting things.**

**Furthermore: Tell me what you think! Hate it? Love it? Tell me why by hitting that review button!**


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